FINALLY: HOLLYWOOD TO MASHUP STARSHIP TROOPERS AND THE GWOT:

Fox has landed Operation Prince Of Freedom, a spec script package for a comedy that will be helmed by Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates director Jake Szymanski. Chernin Entertainment will produce with Gary Sanchez. The script is by Michael Kvamme and Jordan Dunn, and Gary Sanchez’s Adam McKay, Will Ferrell, Kevin Messick and Andrew Steele will produce with Chernin. Fox has had success with the hard R comedy in Deadpool and Kingsman: The Secret Service and this movie fits that ratings mold. The comedy follows a group of ragtag Marines who are attacked by a Taliban insurgency while escorting a politically incorrect C&W star across Afghanistan. Things take an unexpected turn when the Marines and Taliban alike are forced to unite against an invasion of alien bugs.

It’s a comedy with our newfound buddies, those crazy, kooky limb-chopping Taliban! Shades of the line in Paul Schrader’s Auto Focus about Bob Crane landing the starring role on Hogan’s Heroes, the sitcom with “the funny Nazis.” I wonder if it will be set in the mid-2000s to allow for plenty of stale Bush-bashing riffs, just as Saturday Night Live was still making Nixon jokes six years after he left office.