Photo : Netflix

When Netflix announced late last year that it was working wi th Zach Galifianakis and Scott Aukerman to transform their Emmy-winning webseries Between Two Ferns into a movie, it was met with…well, not skepticism, exactly, because Galifianakis and Aukerman have built up enough goodwill over their years of deeply uncomfortable celebrity interviews in order for fans to trust that whatever they ended up making would be true to the series’ engagingly hostile tone. B ut confusion, to be sure . Between Two Ferns is a very pure concept, after all : Man passive aggressively (and also aggressive-aggressively) interviews famous people, famous people punch back, sometimes a sitting U.S. president is there. How do you expand that to feature length?


Netflix released some new details about the project tonight (including a release date, September 20) that make it clear at least what the film’s structure will be : Humiliated when Funny Or Die’s Will Ferrell transforms him into a viral laughingstock, public access host Galifianakis sets out on a road trip to interview a bunch of famous people (identities pending) in order to salvage his interviewer’s reputation. Aukerman is set to direct, as he has all the episodes of Ferns to date ; he and Galifianakis also wrote the movie together. Aukerman’s last big project for Netflix was the delightfully silly Michael Bolton’s Big Sexy Valentine’s Day Special, which aired back in 2017.