The end of Workaholics after seven season left fans of Blake Anderson, Adam DeVine and Anders Holm’s unique brand of foolishness worried that the increasingly popular trio would never work together again.
They needn’t have been concerned. Because, just a year after the conclusion of “Workaholics” we have “Game Over, Man!,” the first feature length comedy from the trio, which revolves around them trying to save their video game benefactor after he is taken hostage by terrorists in a hotel.
It is basically “Die Hard,” but with way more penis jokes. I recently had the chance to talk to “Game Over, Man!’s” star and writer Anders Holm about the Netflix comedy, and here’s what he had to tell me.
How did the idea for “Game Over, Man” originate?
Me and the other guys realized that our favorite episodes of “Workaholics” were the action-orientated episodes. 5 years ago we started on the script, and we knew that if we were ever going to do a movie we were just going to do that but turn it up a notch.
You’re the sole writer on “Game Over, Man,” can you breakdown that process for me.
We all sit down and talk about what we want in the movie, and what cool characters we can be, then I go and massage it into a movie and come up with some set pieces. I try to string together that and the guys’ ideas so that they resemble something of a movie. They give me notes, I come up with new ideas, and then repeat, repeat, repeat and here we are. We will then stick to the plot points in the script, and if there’s a great line we will make sure to hit that, but we don’t generally stick to the script. We like to wing it and keep things loose.
Do you think of yourself as a writer or actor?
My favorite thing is writing, stringing everything together, that’s the most rewarding. I do still feel like acting is a high wire thing, and I like to put it out there in front of everyone and risk it being embarrassing, silly, funny, emotional, vulnerable or whatever.
How did Netflix get involved?
We took the script around town. Sent it to a bunch of studios. Netflix seemed to get it. Other studios didn’t get it. Which is fine because it is a weird movie, and there’s a ton of reasons not to make this movie. But Netflix took the risk, and gave us free reign to do what we wanted. I don’t think this movie would have been made by any other studio, because there is violence and nudity. I’m not sure how many studios think that is bankable anymore.
Why did it take 5 years to make?
We would have made it years earlier. We were just too busy. We had always wanted to make this. But as soon as we were done with “Workaholics” we then blocked off the time to do this. It’s different to what I am doing now. With “Champions” I love being controlled, I wanted to work in a heavily scripted and time sensitive environment on that. With “Game Over, Man,” though, we let it rip. We could say whatever we wanted, and it was fun to be able to do that.
“Game Over, Man” is released on Netflix on March 23.
