Love him or hate him, Kevin James seems to have proven that he has the charisma and the name recognition necessary to become a bona fide movie star in America. Although his career has clearly benefited from ties to Adam Sandler, he also built up a loyal fanbase over the years with his hit show The King of Queens. The success of Paul Blart: Mall Cop took everyone by surprise, and as a result you can bet we’ll be seeing him in a lot more starring roles. He has already finished shooting Ron Howard’s The Dilemma and Happy Madison’s The Zookeeper, both of which will hit theatres next year, and now Sony is setting up a new comedy for him that revolves around the world of mixed martial arts.

Deadline New York reports that the script for the currently untitled film is being written by Allan Loeb (21, The Switch) and revolves around a physics teacher who decides to “step into the octagon” as an MMA fighter in order to raise money to save the music program at his school. The film is being fast tracked, and Sony hopes to shoot it sometime next year.

The subject matter isn’t particularly surprising, as a number of UFC fighters previously guest starred on an episode of The King of Queens, and Kevin James himself has supposedly trained with Randy Couture in the past. We all know that UFC is big business nowadays, and as much as people scoff at Kevin James, I can see this movie being a huge hit. It’s right in the wheel house of his working class male audience. Does this movie hold any interest for you, and what do you think about Kevin James becoming the next big star in comedy?