Wells to Universal: “Please hint that you’re thinking about maybe platforming Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Hail Caesar! sometime in December before the wide break in February? Just for the fun of it? I’ve read the script and it’s a peach, this thing. It’ll be great to have a Coen Bros. knucklehead comedy to put on my Ten Best of 2015 list.” By the way: If you look at the cast list on the Hail, Casear! Wikipedia Page you’ll notice that Patrick Fischler, David Krumholtz and Fisher Stevens portray “Communist screenwriter[s]” and that Dolph Lundgren plays “a Soviet submarine commander.” Do the math. Wouldn’t it be a kick, hypothetically speaking, if an early ’50s Hollywood farce was predicated on the notion that HUAC, John Wayne, Cecil B. Demille, Robert Taylor, Adolphe Menjou, Gary Cooper and all the other witch-hunters were right? And that there was, in fact, a cabal of Hollywood commie screenwriters in league with Stalinist Russia, and that they were plotting to undermine American Democratic values and maybe even take over? New Beverly double-bill in July 2016: Hail Caesar! and Jay Roach‘s Trumbo.