On the heels of the holiday party season it hopes to flout, Paramount Pictures has rung in the new year with the acquisition of Andy Burg & Scott Myers' comedy pitch "Duane Moody's Office Christmas Party."
Chuck Gordon's Daybreak Prods. will produce the "Animal House"-like burlesque, for which Par paid a mid-six figure sum.
Pic follows the title character -- a young professional hanging onto the lower rungs of the corporate ladder -- who is assigned to set up the office Christmas party. If he can pull off the fete without a hitch, he will be promoted, but if it fails he could be shown the door. Of course everything goes awry and the young turk scrambles to salvage the event.
Taking a multimedia approach to the pitch process, Burg & Myers showed up at meetings at several studios with a five-minute video they shot to limn their film idea. The duo hired what one viewer described as a "Jesus-like" character to narrate the video pitch, which the scribes illustrated with still photos of actors they envisioned in the film's roles (including Steve Zahn's mug for the Duane Moody character).
Daybreak prexy Marc Sternberg brought the project into the company and will oversee its development.
"Duane Moody" marks a reteaming of Burg & Myers with Gordon, who produced the film version of their screenplay "Trojan War" (aka, "Rescue Me"). Gordon also produced the 1989 film "K-9," which Myers co-wrote with Steve Siegel.
Burg & Myers also wrote the 1996 feature "Alaska" and have penned a draft of the cop buddy comedy "Chicago Way" (formerly "Two Cops"), which is in development at Paramount and Alphaville.
The scribes are repped by Creative Artists Agency and attorney Jason Sloane.
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