With Five Studios Clamoring to Make A Deal, Can Kim Kardashian Save the Movie Comedy?
In recent years, Hollywood power brokers have been hesitant to throw money at movie comedies, and the market share of humor in a medium made great by the Charlie Chaplins and Mel Brookses of movie history continues to decrease by the year. However, humor hasn’t yet unleashed its biggest box office weapon: Kim Kardashian.
The reality TV star who is arguably the most “famous for being famous” figure in media found herself in the middle of a bidding war this past weekend for her most recent business venture, a comedy film, produced-by and starring Kardashian herself, called The 5th Wheel. Precious little has been publicly revealed about the project with no plot details yet leaked. However, we do know that it will be a “female-driven comedy” to be scripted by veteran Saturday Night Live writer Paula Pell and Totally Biased correspondent Janine Brito. Oh, also, The 5th Wheel already has five major film studios begging to buy it.
Following a 2023 film schedule that saw — with the obvious exception of Barbie — underwhelming box office performances from comedy features, could The 5th Wheel be the shot in the arm necessary to get the genre back on track? It certainly couldn’t be a bigger disaster than Kardashian’s comedy debut.
Along with her work on SNL, Pell is perhaps best known for playing the former girl group star Gloria in Girls5eva, but she is also a significant figure from Tina Fey’s smash hit sitcom 30 Rock, where she served as both producer and writer along with her on-screen role as Pete Hornberger’s poor wife (also named Paula). Additionally, Pell wrote the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler comedy film Sisters in 2015. Brito is also a veteran TV writer who first collaborated with Pell when the two co-starred on the Amy Poehler-directed Netflix film Wine Country in 2019.
With bona-fide comedy writing talent in her corner, Kardashian could very well have a hit on her heavily manicured hands with The 5th Wheel. Obviously, the reality star is known less for telling jokes than she is for being the internet-breaking butt of them on every late-night show and in every Twitter thread for the last decade-and-a-half – however, even comedy films led by more established stars, like Bottoms, Dicks: The Musical and No Hard Feelings, put up uninspiring returns in the past year. With the faith of Hollywood’s financiers behind her, though, who’s to say that Kardashian can’t be the one to help the movie comedy make its comeback?
