One of the minor characters in Judd Apatow’s latest directorial effort Funny People was stand-up comic Randy, who also starred in the viral marketing campaign for the movie. Randy was played by real life comedian Aziz Ansari whom US readers might know from shows like Parks and Recreation and Human Giant and he is apparently in talks with Universal about bringing about a Randy-starring spin-off to Funny People.

From MTV -

[Ansari] and writer-director Jason Woliner, one of Ansari’s collaborators on MTV’s sketch comedy show “Human Giant,” have sold Apatow and Universal Pictures on a pitch for the Randy movie, along with two other movie ideas.

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As for Ansari and Woliner’s other pitches, one of them also sounds inspired by Funny People. Still without a title, it involves a “disgraced cosmonaut (Ansari) who is forced to return to outer space to clear his name.” Reminds me of the fake movie titled Astro-Not, which is one of Adam Sandler’s character’s lame comedies in Funny People. Of course, that fake movie called to mind real movies like The Reluctant Astronaut and RocketMan.

The third project is called Let’s Do This. It is a road trip comedy about two guys on a motivational speaking tour. This one sounds the least interesting at the moment, but given that it has a title, I’m guessing it will be the first to go into production.

With all the talk recently about Apatow sequels (apparently Pineapple Express 2 is being considered) I feel like this might be a better way of dealing with franchising his movies without tainting the originals too much. You can include the original main characters as much or as little as you want while creating a whole new story that does not have to encroach on the original. As for Ansari’s other ideas, well they seem fairly generic, but having said that it’s difficult to convey why a film might be funny in a one line description.