'Between Two Ferns: The Movie' First Look Is Of Zach Galifianakis...Between Two Ferns

Between Two Ferns started off as a viral internet bit: Zach Galifianakis interviews celebrities while sitting between two ferns. The satire of low-budget public access interviews, with Galifianakis playing an outlandish version of a host who would actively antagonize his guests, originated on Scott Aukerman and B. J. Porter's Fox sketch pilot The Right Now! Show before it got picked up in 2008 by Funny Or Die, where it became a much-loved ongoing webseries that maintained its hokey, low-budget appeal even as Galifianakis's star exploded.

Now, Between Two Ferns has caught up to Galifianakis's movie star status: It's becoming a movie. Netflix has released the Between Two Ferns first look images at the feature film based on the web series that interviewed Barack Obama that one time.

Netflix has released three first-look images at Between Two Ferns: The Movie, which stars Galifianakis as a proud TV show host who becomes a "viral laughing stock." Written and directed by Scott Aukerman with Galifianakis, and produced by Aukerman, Galifianakis and Funny Or Die's Caitlin Daley and Mike Farah, Between Two Ferns: The Movie is a meta-extension of the original series, which began in 2008 and has released 21 episodes and one Comedy Central special. Rather than simply showing Galifianakis in his antagonistic persona interviewing celebrities for two hours, the film goes behind the scenes and follows his host as he sets out to restore his reputation.

Here's the premise of the movie per Deadline:

Zach Galifianakis dreamed of becoming a star. But when Will Ferrell discovered his public access TV show "Between Two Ferns" and uploaded it to Funny Or Die, Zach became a viral laughing stock. Now Zach and his crew are taking a road trip to complete a series of high-profile celebrity interviews and restore his reputation.

It sounds like an unusual and quirky road-trip comedy that could become a major hit on Netflix, especially with Galifianakis and Aukerman behind the wheel. In an interview with Vulture, Aukerman described Between Two Ferns: The Movie as a totally "improvised movie," with the script simply providing the basis for the film. "We shot it like an actual documentary, where we built a public-access station and we shot at it. And if something came up where one of the actors would improvise something, we would then get with our production designers and production team and go shoot that scene that just came up in the improvising," Aukerman said.

No official cast list has been announced though Deadline notes that Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), David Letterman, Keanu Reeves (John Wick 3: Parabellum), and Galifianakis's former Hangover co-stars Bradley Cooper (A Star is Born) and Ed Helms (Tag) will be involved in some capacity.

Between Two Ferns: The Movie launches globally on Netflix on September 20, 2019.