Aziz Ansari’s upcoming feature has added another heavy-hitter to its cast. Word is getting around that Seth Rogen will star alongside Bill Murray in Being Mortal, which explores medicine, death, and how to live life to its fullest. Ansari is also on board to co-star from a script he wrote. He is also producing with Youree Henley. Taylor Friedman and Cameron Chidsey are overseeing for Searchlight Pictures.
The film is based on Atul Gawande’s nonfiction book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. Per Gawande’s official website, here is the full description for his fascinating novel:
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.
Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients’ anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them. And families go along with all of it.
In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Now he examines its ultimate limitations and failures – in his own practices as well as others’ – as life draws to a close. And he discovers how we can do better. He follows a hospice nurse on her rounds, a geriatrician in his clinic, and reformers turning nursing homes upside down. He finds people who show us how to have the hard conversations and how to ensure we never sacrifice what people really care about.
Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows that the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life – all the way to the very end.
Principal photography is scheduled to begin in April, with Searchlight looking to release the film in theaters in 2023. Ansari will also produce with Youree Henley. Taylor Friedman and Cameron Chidsey are overseeing for Searchlight Pictures. Being Mortal marks the first time that Rogen and Murray will team for a project, and we suspect that more comedic greats will be added to the cast in good time.
Rogen has several projects in various stages of development, including a role in Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical The Fablemans. Rogen recently filmed a part for Disney’s Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers, and is set to voice Donkey Kong for the star-studded Super Mario Bros. movie. In addition to running his own weed empire and contributing to humanitarian acts, Rogen is a Jack of All Trades and then some.