New Line’s reboot-sequel to the hilarious 80s National Lampoon franchise has added two more names to its cast today, as Key & Peele‘s Keegan-Michael Key and About Last Night‘s Regina Hall have opted into the crazy shenanigans of Vacation.
Key and Hall will join the boot-quel as “family friends of the Griswolds that are described as the perfect family.” The Griswolds, this time around, are no longer the eccentric Clark and Ellen – played by Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo in the original. Taking over in the family’s battered station wagon will be their grown-up son, Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms), who takes his wife Debbie (Christina Applegate) and their two sons on a cross country road trip to relive one of the best summers of his youth.
The pair sound like an updated version of the uptight image-obsessed Margot and Todd from Christmas Vacation. Played by Julia Louis Dreyfus and Nicholas Guest, the couple are constantly at the receiving end of Clark’s haphazard schemes. It’ll be fun to see how Key and Hall’s updated versions might suffer a similarly embarrassing fate.
This return to Walley World was penned by Horrible Bosses scribes John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, who will also make their directorial debuts on the movie. The remainder of the cast embarking on the disastrous trip includes Leslie Mann, who’s slated to take the part of Clark and Ellen’s other child, Audrey Griswold, who’s married to Chris Hemsworth’s beefcake TV reporter, Stone Crandall.
There’s no doubt a lot riding on this venture for New Line , as evidenced by the creme-de-le-creme of comedy players. Writing duo Daley and Goldstein are going from strength to strength, and clearly the studio’s got a lot of faith that they can pull it off. Should they be successful, we can expect even more slapstick Griswold action to come. After all, there’s enough sequels to raid for ideas.