Deadline is reporting that director Barry Levinson is teaming with Billy Crystal for a new feature film comedy entitled Revival, which has been scripted by Phil Primason (5 Doctors). It will mark the first collaboration between Levinson and Crystal, although they did both previously serve as executive producers on Analyze This and Analyze That.
The film will follow “a once-legendary Broadway composer who, after a bitter public divorce, gets stuck composing jingles to make ends meet finds out that a Staten Island high school is staging his most famous musical, and he becomes obsessed with shutting it down. In the meantime, all the money he earns writing stupid jingles goes to keep his only friend — his old, incontinent dog Julius — alive. Oh, yeah, and Crystal’s character, who is trying to kick his smoking habit by using electronic cigarettes, finds himself becoming addicted to the smokeless replacements.”
Levinson’s next film, The Wizard of Lies starring Robert De Niro as Bernie Madoff, is set to premiere on HBO on May 20th.