Adam Sandler and
Kevin James in talks to play fake gay couple

Adam Sandler and Kevin James are in negotiations to play firefighters who pretend to be a gay couple in an upcoming film comedy, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin is attached to take the helm of the long-gestating project at Universal Pictures.

The firefighters in Chuck and Larry pose as a married gay couple in order to receive domestic-partner benefits. Alexander Payne and James Taylor, the Oscar-winning team behind Sideways and About Schmidt, have written the current draft of the screenplay based on a treatment by Lew Gallo.

The coming together of Sandler and James finally puts the project, which has been at the studio since the late 1990s, on the runway. A parade of writers has hammered out drafts over the years, and various combinations of actors, such as Will Smith and Nicolas Cage, Smith and James Gandolfini, and Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson have flirted with the movie. (Borys Kit, Reuters)