Will Ferrell’s comedy on Reagan dementia unlikely after his children object
Will Ferrell’s attempt to cast former President Ronald Reagan’s dementia as comedy is falling flat.
The comedian had planned to produce and star in a satirical movie about the former president before Ronald Reagan’s children called him out Thursday for his would-be treatment of their father’s Alzheimer’s disease.
"I think there's a strong chance this film won't get made now,” said the Hollywood Reporter’s Matthew Belloni. “The outrage and the president's children coming out and saying that they don't want it to be made, I think that could have a very detrimental effect on this movie getting greenlit."
The so-called “dementia comedy” would have spoofed Reagan’s presidency by following an intern’s attempts to convince him that he is playing a movie role as dementia takes hold at the beginning of his second term.
Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis criticized Ferrell Thursday for using her father’s illness as a joke.
“Alzheimer’s is the ultimate pirate, pillaging a person’s life and leaving an empty landscape behind,” she wrote. “Perhaps for your comedy you would like to visit some dementia facilities. I have — I didn’t find anything comedic there, and my hope would be that if you’re a decent human being, you wouldn’t either.”
Her father, she said, was afraid as he slipped farther into his illness.
“I watched helplessly as he reached for memories, for words, that were suddenly out of reach and moving farther away,” she wrote. “There was laughter in those years, but there was never humor.”
Reagan’s son Michael tweeted:
#Alzheimers is not a comedy to the 5 million people who are suffering with the decease,it first robs you of your mind and then it kills you
— Michael Reagan (@ReaganWorld) April 29, 2016
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker also weighed in on Facebook:
Reagan died in 2004, and his wife Nancy died last month.
The screenplay had been placed on the “Black List,” which collects the previous year’s best unproduced scripts, and no studio had “greenlighted” it for production.
This story was originally published April 29, 2016 at 10:35 AM with the headline "Will Ferrell’s comedy on Reagan dementia unlikely after his children object."