Weird Al Will Be Played By, You Guessed It, Daniel Radcliffe In A New Biopic
(AV Club) Daniel Radcliffe is set to play none other than “Weird Al” Yankovic in the upcoming pseudo-biopic, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. The film will be coming to The Roku Channel via Funny or Die and Tango.
We say “pseudo-biopic” because, c’mon, this is Weird Al we’re talking about here—it’s safe to say this will be less Walk the Line and more Walk Hard, judging by everyone already involved in the project. And thank God for that.
“When my last movie UHF came out in 1989, I made a solemn vow to my fans that I would release a major motion picture every 33 years, like clockwork. I’m very happy to say we’re on schedule,” Yankovic says in a press release, adding that he is “absolutely thrilled that Daniel Radcliffe will be portraying me in the film. I have no doubt whatsoever that this is the role future generations will remember him for.”
Weird Al is on of the most fascinating guys on the planet to me. He's super creative and just found his niche and hammered it. You might think he is just a parody song guy, but he is one of just 3 musicians on earth to have top-40 singles in each of the last 4 decades. Just him, Michael Jackson and Madonna have that honor.
As a fan of 'UHF', I'm excited to see more Weird Al content and the idea of a Dewey Cox style biopic is absolutely perfect. As for the casting, it definitely has my attention. Radcliffe is sneakily a damn good comedic actor and is solid at playing weird. But I also just cant imagine him in this role AT ALL. It might just be because Weird Al is so distinct and Radcliffe is just so squarely the face of such a huge franchise. It also might be because he doesn't look much like Weird Al. Maybe it's just a combination of those things. Regardless, I am keeping my hopes for this high because I just love that Yugoslavian bastard.