Bob Odenkirk Shot His Latest Movie In A Single Day
Bob Odenkirk filmed a remake of Tommy Wiseau's The Room for charity and it only took him a day.
Bob Odenkirk wants you to know he did not hit her, he did nahhhhht. In what is easily the weirdest entertainment news to come about in a while, the Breaking Bad star filmed a shot-for-shot remake of cult classic The Room, and all it took him was 24hrs. As SlashFilm reports, Odenkirk and Co. somehow managed to film an entire movie in a day while still taking the source material seriously.
The original 2003 movie was a disasterpiece helmed by professional oddball Tommy Wiseau. Wiseau decided to write and film his own movie despite having no experience (or talent) in either field. The result is a movie so legendarily bad that it became a cult classic with a devoted following that rivals The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Despite the original’s reputation as a sub-MST3K dumpster fire of awfulness, Bob Odenkirk has vowed his version of The Room will be played completely straight. No winks at the camera, no camping it up just, “honest and organic to the scene,” as the Lucky Hank star put it.
Bob Odenkirk isn’t alone in his reverence for the source material. Everyone who worked on The Room agreed to take the movie seriously, with the director going as far as to say he “wanted to treat it like Aaron Sorkin [adapting] Shakespeare.”
The movie is a charity production courtesy of Acting for a Cause. The volunteer organization is using the film to raise money for amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, and was directed by Acting for a Cause creator Brando Crawford. Acting for a Cause came about during the 2020 COVID lockdown and usually stages table reads via Zoom.
Bob Odenkirk’s The Room, however, called for something a bit more elaborate.
The production incorporated green screens to replicate settings from the original movie. Filming the whole thing in one place is what allowed the cast and crew to complete the movie so quickly. One could argue, however, that 24 hours is still too long for someone of Bob Odenkirk’s talent to spend making an update of The Room, considering the original’s completely thrown together esthetic.
Bob Odenkirk’s version of The Room will also star Bella Heathcote (Dark Shadows) as Lisa, Kate Siegel (Midnight Mass) as Claudette Lisa’s mother as well as Siegel’s real-life husband, director Mike Flanagan, as the therapist. For fans of the original, however, there’s only one cast member that really matters. Reprising his role as Mark (of “Oh, hi Mark,” fame) is none other than Greg Sestero.
The remake will be available digitally sometime in June to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the original film. That means that, unfortunately, you’ll have to wait a bit before you can watch Bob Odenkirk cry, “You’re tearing me apart Lisa!” in one of The Room‘s most iconic scenes. In the meantime, you can check out the trailer for Tommy Wiseau’s long-anticipated follow-up to The Room, Big Shark.
The movie is about, well, a big shark that gets up to some big-sharking and looks like a total cheese-fest to rival Sharknado.
