Neil Patrick Harris

Indie flick and Beastly for HIMYM star

Fresh from rocking his stint as host of The Tonys – check out the hilarious closing number – the immensely talented Neil Patrick Harris has nabbed starring roles in not one, but two, upcoming flicks.

The Artist Formerly Known As Doogie will take a lead role in Josh Shelov’s The Best And The Brightest, an indie comedy about a couple who move to New York and become involved in the world of private kindergartens… with hilarious results, we’re guessing.

Harris will play the husband, while Bonnie Somerville is his social-climber wife. They join a cast that includes Amy Sedaris, John Hodgman, Bridget Regan, Kate Mulgrew, Christopher McDonald and, and this one we’re particularly pleased about, Darth Maul/Duane Benzie himself, Peter Serafinowicz. Good to see that he’s carving out something of a career for himself Stateside.

The second film on NPH’s to-do list during his summer hiatus from the excellent sitcom, How I Met Your Mother, is Beastly, the modern-day update of Beauty And The Beast, starring Stormbreaker’s Alex Pettyfer as a young man who is hideously disfigured, and Vanessa Hudgens as the young girl who learns to love him despite his ugly-bugliness, which we’re guessing will be miraculously cured by movie’s end.

When we first heard about this project last week, our first instinct was to clap our ears, yell ‘No!’ repeatedly, and then dive behind the sofa until it goes away. But Harris’ casting, as a blind man who teaches Pettfyer how to act the ways of the world, goes some way towards making us take it seriously. Well, semi-seriously.

Harris is already working on The Best And The Brightest, which started shooting recently in Philadelphia, while Beastly is in pre-production at the moment up in Vancouver.