1Get Preemptively Excited for ‘Burt Wonderstone’

This image of comedy treasure Steve Carell ought to whet your interest in next year’s Burt Wonderstone, in which Carell stars as Burt Wonderstone.

The premise: a Vegas magician “breaks up with his longtime stage partner” (thank you, IMDb), and then a “new, ‘hip’ street magician” threatens the aging Wonderstone’s “relevance.” Hee hee!

Jim Carrey stars as Wonderstone’s professional nemesis, Steve Haines. Here he is as Steve Haines:

God, that is so perfect. Whoever designed the costumes and makeup freaking nailed it.

Like, I am a huge fan of “close magic,” but the humorlessness of no-frills street magic is so ripe for parody. Can anyone take Criss Angel seriously? He looks like a character from some vampire anime thing.

In the meantime, serial creeper Steve Buscemi shares top billing as “Anton Lovecraft.” Educated guess: Buscemi’s character is a practitioner of the Darkest Arts. Too, too funny.

There’s another reason you should be excited about Burt Wonderstone: the screenplay was penned by prodigy John Francis Daley. That’s right, the rosy-cheeked kid from Freaks and Geeks. He’s 26! Twenty-six years old! And he wrote Horrible Bosses! That is just marvelously nuts to me; good grief.

Guys, I honestly intended to post the pic of Carell in magician’s garb over the weekend, and I completely blanked. I continued to forget about this amazing photo of Carell until this very morning, when the photo, without comment, became the #1 story on Reddit. People are really excited for this movie, you guys!

P.S. Um, yes. I decided to pad this post’s image gallery with some other pics from the set. Thanks, Celebuzz!

January 17, 2012 at 11:30 am by Jenn