Kumail Nanjiani’s Any Person, Living or Dead Sounds like a More Violent Bill & Ted

Sometimes, all you need is a perfect synopsis and the right actor’s name or face to convince us we need to see a movie. Any Person, Living or Dead sounds like one of those scenarios.

Fresh off an unfortunately disappointing premiere episode of CBS All Access’ new version of The Twilight Zone, Kumail Nanjiani will have several chances to rebound. The comedian, who achieved a significantly higher level of exposure thanks to The Big Sick in 2017, has a buddy action movie called Stuber due out in July, where he’ll be performing alongside Drax himself, Dave Bautista. In Any Person, Living or Dead, on the other hand, he’ll be playing a “reclusive scientist” who creates his own personal time machine with the goal of solving the modern world’s problems … only to find that history’s greatest minds might not be as much help as he thought. Here’s the official synopsis:

The story follows a brilliant reclusive scientist who, using his homemade time machine, gathers a roundtable of the greatest minds in history (Shakespeare, George Washington, Aristotle, etc.) to solve all of humanity’s problems. Unfortunately, his plan fails to take into account language barriers, ancient racism and the tendency of medieval men to commit murder. Instead of learning from these Great Men of History, our hero has no choice but to hunt them down and blast them to the past before they can ruin our future.

It’s impossible not to immediately be reminded of the likes of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, except it sounds like in this scenario, Kumail’s character will end up hunting down Abraham Lincoln rather than partying with him. Consider us intrigued. The film seems like the perfect vehicle to tear down history’s rose colored glasses and our misconstrued views on “great men.”

Any Person, Living or Dead was written by Simon Rich, based on his own short story, which was featured in a collection called Hits and Misses. Rich is the creator of several other quirky comedies, such as FXX’s Man Seeking Woman and TBS’ Miracle Workers with Danielle Radcliffe. Jonathan Krisel, who executive produced Baskets and Portlandia, will apparently make his directorial debut on Any Person, Living or Dead.

We look forward to hearing more about a film with such a fun, high-concept premise. Check back for more details on Any Person, Living or Dead in the future.