Kevin and Jake: Down Under Fockers?

I missed this news a few weeks ago when it was being reported – Kevin Costner and Jake Gyllenhaal are now in Brisbane filming a dramedy, Honeymoon With Harry. Jake plays a man engaged to Sarah Pidgeon, but her dad, Kevin, might not approve of him and they end up on a road trip for…reasons…and end up figuring out how to get along. Jake’s character is apparently “rough-around-the-edges” while Kevin’s has been described as “prickly” and “overbearing”. So the draw here is watching Kevin and Jake annoying each other, I think?

Maybe it’s because the Focker-in-Law trailer just came out this week, the third (?) installment of the Meet the Parents franchise, now starring Ariana Grande as the person trying to join the family, but this is what Honeymoon With Harry sounded like to me when I read the synopsis. Like Kevin as Robert De Niro and Jake as Ben Stiller with some dramatic elements, directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa whose work we probably best know from Crazy, Stupid, Love on the film side…which came out 15 years ago this year, HOWWWW??? Anyway, Glen and John have been trying to get this made for two decades and Dan Fogelman wrote the script so there will be laughing but there will also, likely, be a lot of crying since this is the trio behind This Is Us. 

Kevin and Jake, though, were never on my bingo card in this kind of movie, not that I’m not into it, I just didn’t think Kevin was interested in any role in which he wasn’t on horseback in a cowboy hat. Sarah noted, though, when I mentioned that I wanted to post about it last night, that he probably has to make some money back from the flop that was Horizon. If you don’t know what that means, well, this is the point. He sank $38 million into a movie that was supposed to be a four-part franchise hoping for Avatar results, thinking maybe people would follow him from Yellowstone into the distance and nobody cared. And now he’s in Australia going on a honeymoon with Jake Gyllenhaal in a film that will be heavy on feelings underneath the comedy. So it’ll be interesting to see whether or not Kevin’s “reputation” shows up on this set.

The reputation is that he’s difficult – there’s a lot of ego here, he’s been described as arrogant, he’s been known to clash with directors and studio executives. Jake, meanwhile, is almost 30 years younger, in the prime of his career. How chill are the vibes on this set? Super chill, right?