Simon Rich’s short story Any Person Living or Dead is being made into a film and Pakistani-American actor and stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani has been signed in to star in the film. Rich will adapt the script, and Jonathan Krisel will be director of the film. The story was first published in the collection of short stories titled Hits And Misses, written by Simon.
The collection of stories ‘Hits and Misses’ was published by Little, Brown and Company, and Legendary Entertainment has acquired the feature film rights to the story.
Variety reports the synopsis as, “It follows a brilliant reclusive scientist who, using his homemade time machine, gathers a roundtable of the greatest minds in history (Shakespeare, George Washington, Aristotle, etc.) to solve all of humanity’s problems.
Unfortunately, his plan fails to take into account language barriers, ancient racism and the tendency of medieval men to commit murder. Instead of learning from these Great Men of History, our hero has no choice but to hunt them down and blast them to the past before they can ruin our future.”