Funny auteur Peter Farrelly (There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, Three Stooges) leaves Bobby behind for his first solo venture, and a mostly dramatic one at that. The New Academy Kidz won’t like this — too calculated, too boomerish, too awards-baity — but I’m sensing the right stuff. The Universal release will play Toronto, and then open commercially on 11.21.

Boilerplate: “Inspired by a true story, the 1960s-era film, which is co-written by Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga and Brian Currie, follows Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), a rough-and-tumble Italian-American bouncer from the Bronx, who is hired to drive a world-class Black pianist named Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South. Along the way, while being confronted with racism and bigotry, these two men from radically different backgrounds develop a genuine fellowship and mutual affection for each other.”

Driving Mr. Shirley?

Update from distribution guy: “Green Book has supposedly been testing through the roof for months, big time. This will be the next Help or Hidden Figures, you can be sure.”