Late night is getting another host named Jimmy—this time on the big screen in a new dark comedy.
Comedian Tim Heidecker will take on the all-too-familiar talk show moniker in The Comedy Hour. As Deadline first reported, the film follows a beleaguered late-night host “forced to produce his show through famine, fire, and plague.” When the network saddles him with a robot co-host, audiences come to prefer the machine to the man. The story unfolds “five minutes into the future,” in a version of America teetering on collapse.
Tatiana Maslany co-stars as the show’s producer. The Comedy Hour is written by Colby Day, who makes his feature directorial debut with the project. Day previously scripted the Adam Sandler sci-fi drama Spaceman and the upcoming In the Blink of an Eye, starring Kate McKinnon. The film is produced by Scythia Films, the company behind last year’s Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice.
It’s a fitting role for Heidecker, who has long specialized in skewering media and performance culture through his parody stand-up specials and podcasts. His latest turn seems poised to extend that satirical streak to the world of late night itself.
While the universe of real-life late-night television shows has shrunk in recent years, the format that inspired classic movies and TV shows like The King of Comedy and The Larry Sanders Show continues to be fertile ground for storytelling. Last year’s indie horror breakout Late Night with the Devil reimagined a supernatural event as found footage from a fictional talk show, Night Owls with Jack Delroy, earning critical praise for its inventive framing.
This year, HBO Max’s Emmy-winning hit Hacks devoted an entire season to comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) landing her own talk show, Late Night with Deborah Vance—with results that were both inspired and, at times, questionably accurate.
