University Admission Comedy 'Crazy U' Being Developed For Will Ferrell

Reading the headline above you might think Will Ferrell and Todd Phillips finally came up with a movie to follow Old School. But this is something different. New Line has picked up the screen rights to Andrew Ferguson's book Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course In Getting His Kid Into College, and will develop the Crazy U script as a potential star turn for Ferrell.

Deadline says that Ferrell's company Gary Sanchez will produce, but there is no screenwriter set at this point.

The plot of the film is all in the full title of the book: Ferrell would play a dad who gets super-involved in making sure his son gets into an expensive and elite university. Picture Ferrell seriously over-involved in helping his kid score high on the SAT, and deal with campus visits and interviews.

Or just read this recap of the book:

The cutthroat competition to get into the perfect college can drive students to the brink of madness and push their parents over the edge—and bury them in an avalanche of books that claim to hold the secret of success. Pummeled by peers, creeped out by counselors, and addled by advice books, Andrew Ferguson has come to believe that a single misstep could cost his son a shot at a happy and fulfilling future. He feels the pressure to get it right from the moment the first color brochures land in his mailbox, sent from colleges soliciting customers as though they were sailors come to port.

First is a visit with the most sought-after, most expensive—and surely most intimidating—private college consultant in the nation. Then come the steps familiar to parents and their college-bound children, seen through a gimlet eye: a session with a distracted high school counselor, preparations for the SAT and an immersion in its mysteries, unhelpful help from essay coaches and admissions directors, endless campus tours, and finally, as spring arrives, the waiting, waiting, waiting for the envelope that bears news of the future.