We may be finally getting some more (hugely exciting) casting updates on Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s “The World’s End,” but for a while the only other name confirmed was Rosamund Pike (“Die Another Day,” “Jack Reacher”). Well, Pike must have got the Simon Pegg bug because she’ll be reuniting with him very soon after the Wright film finishes shooting, on the set of the indie flick “Hector and the Search for Happiness.”
Peter Chelsom (“Hannah Montana: The Movie,” “Serendipity”) co-wrote the script and is also directing the adaptation of a Francois Lelord novel. Pegg, who signed on to lead the project during Cannes, will play a psychiatrist who searches the globe for the secret of happiness and Pike will star as his girlfriend. Also joining the cast is last year’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar-winner Christopher Plummer as a UCLA professor who is a leading mind in the field of happiness studies.
We’re going to go ahead and assume there’s a good script behind this project to be able to attract the kind of talent it has. Sure Pegg makes some bad calls every so often (this year’s “A Fantastic Fear of Everything” for example), but Pike is coming off a hot streak of high-profile films after “Wrath of the Titans” and "Jack Reacher," and Plummer’s probably got a good selection of roles to pick from after that Oscar boost. It’s one to keep an eye on, but for the moment at least it’s going to be one that stays in the shadow of "The World's End." Read the film's full synopsis below.
Hector is an eccentric yet irresistible London psychiatrist in crisis: his patients are just not getting any happier! He’s going nowhere. Then one day, armed with buckets of courage and an almost child-like curiosity, Hector breaks out of his sheltered vacuum of a life into a global quest to find out if happiness exists. More importantly, if it exists for Hector. And so begins a colourful, exotic, dangerous and hysterical journey!
