John Cusack, Johnny Knoxville to Star in Comedy 'Carnaval' (Exclusive)

John Cusack and Johnny Knoxville are teaming up for Carnaval, a comedy that Josh Stern is directing.

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Stone Village is producing and financing. The company’s Scott Steindorff, Dylan Russell and Scott LaStaiti serve as producers.

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Cusack will play a sports scout sent to Rio de Janeiro during the over-the-top bacchanalia of Carnaval to recruit the world’s best soccer player with the promise that if he signs the star, he will inherit the agency. Knoxville plays his best friend, a musician who tags along and has an affair with a woman who turns out to be the player’s girlfriend, derailing the signing mission.

Former agent David Styne wrote the initial script, which was rewritten by Stern. (Styne is also serving as a producer.)

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The movie will shoot in Rio this January.

HSI International will be selling the foreign rights to Carnaval at next month’s American Film Market. Stone Village is shopping at AFM its untitled Pablo Escobar project (Lincoln Lawyer director Brad Furman is helming) as well as The Master and Margarita, an adaptation of the famed Russian novel written by Mikhail Bulgakov.

CAA-repped Cusack will next be seen as Edgar Allan Poe in the thriller The Raven, set for a March 9 release.

Knoxville, also repped by CAA, just started shooting Last Stand with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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