Benicio Del Toro Is Still Candidate To Play Moe In Farrellys’ THE THREE STOOGES Movie

Johnny Koxville and Andy Samberg were some of the names recently rumored for THE THREE STOOGES movie developed by The Farrelly Brothers but shortly after that one of the bros, Peter Farrelly denied it, stating that the roles of Moe, Larry and Curly are still open to anyone. Peter chatted with the providence Journal, via The Playlist, recently and said that Benicio Del Toro is still the front runner to play Moe. If you recalled, Del Toro was attached to the project back when Jim Carrey and Sean Penn were expected to play Curly and Larry respectively…

“Benicio [Del Toro] is the front runner for Moe, but we’ve not made a deal with him yet.
“The problem is that everybody’s gotta read for the part,”
Our feeling is that it just can’t be your take on Moe. It’s gotta be Moe. Someone could nail Curly’s mannerisms, but if you’re 130 pounds it probably wouldn’t work.”

The project which is now housed at Fox, is not a biopic, the story will have THE THREE STOOGES start out as as newborns at the door of an orphanage. The Farrellys want Richard Jenkins to play the head nun who is terrorized by those little stooges.
And the story will follow them to adulthood and much like the original shorts, they’ll get the best “of the wealthy society matrons that tried to exploit them” Along the way there’ll be good old fashioned Stooges’ style non-stop physical pain comedy.
The plan is to divide the movie into three-27 minute PG-rated segments. That fact alone made it tough for The Farrellys to sell the idea back in the early stages of the project..

“It’s all new material. It’s not a biopic. We want to give a matinee feel to it. But none of the studios had any interest in it at the beginning. There was a lot to prove. We even had to show that in the script, despite all the hitting the Stooges were known for, it could be a PG movie.”

Studio expects production on THE THREE STOOGES to start on March 14th, 2011