Zach Galifianakis is in final negotiations to star in an new comedy with Owen Wilson, The Wrap reports. Formerly titled Loomis Fargo, the currently untitled movie  is based on the true story of the Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery, a $17.3 million heist by a group of armored car guards in North Carolina in 1997. Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) is directing the film, and Lorne Michaels is producing. Jim Carrey was previously attached to play the role Zach Galifianakis is taking over. Galifianakis and Wilson recently starred together in Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner’s upcoming indie comedy-drama You Are Here.
The Loomis Fargo heist comedy has been in development for a couple years now. Past drafts of the script were written by written by Eastbound & Down duo Jody Hill and Danny McBride and Up All Night creator Emily Spivey, but the current draft was scripted by Chris Bowman and Hubbel Palmer, two writers for Fox’s animated Napoleon Dynamite series. McBride was looking to star in the movie back in 2011, with Hill directing it, and here’s how McBride described the movie back then:
These rednecks robbed Loomis Fargo for over $17 million. And they would have gotten away with it, except they stayed in the town they were living in. They literally moved from trailers into the richest neighborhoods in town, lived like kings, bought their wives tit jobs. Jody wants to make it like a southern Godfather.