Parks and Recreation star Aubrey Plaza has booked her next movie role. She’ll be playing the female lead in Ned Rifle, the long-awaited dark comedy from writer/director Hal Hartley, Variety reports. Ned Rifle is the third and final chapter in Hartley’s Henry Fool trilogy, which began with 1997’s Henry Fool and continued with 2007’s Fay Grim. The movie was funded by a Kickstarter campaign last year.
Here’s Hartley describing the plot:
In this swiftly paced conclusion, Henry and Fay’s son, Ned, played by Liam Aiken, turns 18 and leaves a witness protection program. (“Rifle†is his maternal grandmother’s maiden name—he’s incognito). His mom has spent the last four years in military custody for alleged terrorist activities (see Fay Grim,) and is transferred to a federal penitentiary to serve a life sentence. Ned, who has absorbed the Christianity of the well adjusted and devout family he has been living with, nevertheless sets out to find and kill his dad, Henry Fool, for the mess the man has made of Fay’s life. But his aims are frustrated by the brilliant, sexy, and troubled Susan [Aubrey Plaza], whose connection to Henry predates even the great man’s arrival in the lives of the Grim family.NED RIFLE is the most accessible and rollicking film I’ve ever written while concerning things I care about deeply. Oddly, I suspect I’ve written a hit. If I can just get it made. (I felt this way about Henry Fool too which did in fact turn out to be my most financially successful film.)