Will Ferrell is heading back to the North Pole for the first time since 2003's Elf, a film that scored over $220M at the time. So yeah, why wouldn't he go back? Deadline reports Ferrell will star in an untitled comedy based on a real life expedition story.
Sony Pictures picked up the rights to the New York Times article by Guy Lawson titled “Ice Pack: An Insurance Salesman and a Doctor Walk Into a Bar, and End Up at the North Pole". The film is being pegged as a buddy comedy, centered on a group of Minnesota guys in 1968 who got drunk and came up with the crazy idea to ride snowmobiles to the Arctic. Leading this expedition was insurance salesman Ralph Plaisted, joined by his doctor pal Art Afderhiede, an athletic French Canadian, a local Honda dealer, and a geography teacher. They secured sponsorships for the journey, and pressed ahead despite failing a psychological stress test and enduring rejection by the National Geographic Society. With a stockpile of whiskey in their Ski-Doos, they overcame freezing temperatures, hungry bears, and near-drowning to be the first such expedition to be successful.
If Lawson's name sounds familiar it's because he also wrote the article "Arms and the Dudes" which is now the movie War Dogs starring Jonah Hill and Miles Teller. This totally seems like the kind of movie Ferrell would be perfect for. Can't you see him being chased by an angry polar bear right now?
