First images from the ensemble comedy Movie 43 featuring Kate Winslet, Terrence Howard, Emma Stone, and more

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

While I am not exactly sure what the title MOVIE 43 means, I have a feeling it is going to be pretty funny. The anthology comedy will feature 25 shorts from 12 different directors including Patrik Forsberg, Peter Farrelly, Elizabeth Banks, Steven Brill, Steve Carr, Rusty Cundieff, James Duffy, Griffin Dunne, James Gunn, Bob Odenkirk and Brett Ratner. That is a lot of directors to go along with a huge cast including Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Bell, Anna Faris, Jimmy Bennett, Leslie Bibb, Kate Bosworth, Gerard Butler, Kieran Culkin, Josh Duhamel, Richard Gere, John Hodgman, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Knoxville, Beth Littleford, Justin Long, Aasif Mandvi, Jack McBrayer, Stephen Merchant, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber, Seann William Scott, Tony Shalhoub, Emma Stone, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman, Matt Walsh, Patrick Warburton, Naomi Watts, Jeremy Allen White, and Kate Winslet

Entertainment Weekly has posted 8 images from the movie featuring some of these stars. Each image came with a nice blurb from Farrelly describing what the scene was about. Just from these quick glimpses I am even more interested in the flick.

”This guy, Anna Faris’ real-life husband Chris Pratt, meets the perfect woman, the modern day Donna Reed, played by Anna. She’s sweet, she’s kind, and she just has this thing: she wants him to poop on her,” says Farrelly. ”That frosting is frosting, and it’s also her thing. Eh eh?”

”Halle Berry and Stephen Merchant play the ultimate game of Truth or Dare. They meet through an online dating service [and later] go to a restaurant,” says Farrelly. ”After some small talk, Halle Berry is sick of it, and says, ‘Let’s play Truth or Dare.’ They start one-upping each other in a very very funny way. The turkey baster is verrrrrrry interesting.”

”It’s the first all-black basketball team to host a championship, in the ’50s,” says Farrelly. ”They’re playing an all-white team, and they’re terrified. Terrence Howard has to convince these 6’8” black guys that they’re better than these 5’9” white guys.”

”Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville are best friends who had a falling out because Johnny was with [Seann’s] girl one night,” says Farrelly. ”To make it up, Johnny delivers Seann a pissed-off, angry, violent leprechaun, played by Gerard Butler. Johnny is trying to tickle him with a feather to get him to sneeze fairy dust to prove to Seann it’s a leprechaun.”

”Naomi Watts and [real-life partner] Liev Schreiber are homeschooling their son, played by Jeremy Allen White, who’s in Shameless, and they think schooling is about the entire experience, including being hazed, bullied, demeaned,” says Farrelly. ”Besides making him study, they’re torturing him. This is one of my favorites, and so funny.”

”Emma Stone and Kieran Culkin are a couple that’s broken up, and meet again in a supermarket,” says Farrelly. ”They cut through all the bulls— in a relationship, but unbeknownst to her, they’re on a loudspeaker. They start getting very intimate. It’s really funny.”

”In this, Kate Winslet’s on a date with Hugh Jackman, and she finds out he has quite a funny and strange birth defect — during dinner,” says Peter Farrelly, one of the sprawling ensemble comedy’s 12 co-directors. ”It’s a blind date. It’s her trying to navigate the waters.”

MOVIE 43 will, if anything, be a nice return to anthology cinema. The last good comedy made up of skits that we had was David Wain’s THE TEN back in 2007. We will see how good these directors are when MOVIE 43 opens on January 25, 2013.