Since launching in 2006 the comedy video website Funny or Die has been slowly working its way up to television and film. The site was founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's production company and the two funny men have released some pretty hilarious stuff on the site, including the classic "The Landlord" video featuring McKay's daughter.
Funny or Die is going epic with their next project though. It's a miniseries that will begin airing on IFC sometime in 2014 called THE SPOILS OF BABYLON. Production on the miniseries just started and in total six half-hour episodes will be created for the limited run. The miniseries is being written by Matt Piedmont and Andrew Steele (CASA DE MI PADRE) and Piedmont will direct.
THE SPOILS OF BABYLON is a spoof of the epic miniseries genre and is an "adaptation" of the book by Eric Jonrosh, who will be played by Will Ferrell. THE SPOILS OF BABYLON apparently covers a hundred years of a rich oil family's life as they deal with sex, drama and international sabotage.
THE SPOILS OF BABYLON also has a pretty awesome cast: Tim Robbins is the head of the family while Kristen Wiig plays his daughter and Tobey Maguire will play Robbins' adopted son. Haley Joel Osment will play Wiig's evil son in the series and Michael Sheen will appear as her husband. Jessica Alba also stars in the series as Maguire's love interest. Not enough for you? Well Val Kilmer and Steve Tom are also in it as two U.S. Army generals and Will Ferrell (besides playing the fictional author) will be the Shah of Iran.
Based on the description and the very short teaser it looks like THE SPOILS OF BABYLON is a mix of CASA DE MI PADRE, Ferrell's Robert Goulet skits from SNL and the British comedy Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, all of which bodes well for the miniseries. They've got a good cast lined up and I'm very interested in seeing what sort of insanity will be unleashed on us when it starts to air next year.