Last year, it was reported that Reno 911! and The State duo Robert Ben Garant and Tom Lennon were planning to direct a comedic movie version of the cheesy 90s lifeguard soap Baywatch a la 21 Jump Street, and now, they’ve found their new David Hasselhoff: SNL’s Bill Hader. The Wrap reports that Hader will play the movie’s lead, based on David Hasselhoff’s original character and that Hasselhoff himself and Pamela Anderson will be making cameos.
The Baywatch movie follows the central group of lifeguards dealing with an oil rig off the Malibu coast that turns out to be a meth lab. Jeremy Garelick (The Break-Up) and Peter Tolan (Rescue Me/Larry Sanders) each wrote drafts of the script, but presumably Garant and Lennon are rewriting it. “They’re so excited they made us shoot a trailer and the script isn’t even done,” said Garant, who added that filming is supposed to start in April. It’s not known the filming will affect Hader’s SNL schedule - he’s currently in the midst of his eight season there - but this sounds like it’s gonna be a lotta fun all around and will be way funnier than the original Baywatch was - or intentionally funnier at the very least.
UPDATE: Collider says they reached out to Bill Hader’s rep (who also reps Robert Ben Garant) and that said rep says Bill Hader isn’t involved in this project and that the script isn’t even finished yet. The Wrap, who originally reported the story, had it directly from Garant’s mouth that Hader was involved and Garant had even told them himself that the script wasn’t finished, so maybe Hader will become officially involved in the project once there’s a final script in place.
