The Duplass brothers and Todd Phillips to team up for recession story Mule

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Todd Phillips (THE HANGOVER) is a funny guy. The Duplass brothers (JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME) are funny guys. Out of the ordinary ways of dealing with difficulty can be funny. And weed can be funny.

Put them all into an herb grinder, grind them up, and you have MULE, the upcoming comedic collaboration between all of four (five?) of those things. Mark and Jay Duplass will script the adaptation of Tony D’Souza’s book Mule: A Novel of Moving Weight with Todd Phillips set to direct.  

The story runs something like this: James and Kate are golden children of the late twentieth-century, flush with opportunity. But then economic downturn and an unexpected pregnancy send them searching for a way to make do. A winter in the mountains of California’s Siskiyou County introduces a tempting opportunity.

A friend grows prime-grade marijuana; if James transports just one load from Cali to Florida, he’ll pull down enough cash to survive for months. James navigates life as a mule, then a boss — from money-hungry friends to gun-toting drug lords, from Sacramento to Tallahassee, from just making the weight move cross-country to making thousands of dollars a day. The risks keep rising, forcing him to the

next criminal level. A kidnapping, a shoot-out, a bank vault — it all culminates in a swirl of action. Absorbing and timely, Mule perfectly captures the anxieties of plunging into the criminal world and of being a young person in a moment when the American Dream you never had to believe in suddenly vanishes from the menu.