Billy Crystal and Tiffany Haddish to Star in Comedy HERE TODAY

Billy Crystal and Tiffany Haddish are set to star in the independent comedy "Here Today," according to Variety. The duo will also produce the comedy, with Crystal directing from a screenplay he co-wrote with Alan Zweibel.

"Here Today" is based on Zweibel's short story "The Prize." Crystal will portray a veteran comedy writer who is slowly but surely losing his grip on reality and befriends a talented young New York street singer, played by Haddish. Together, they form an unlikely friendship that kicks the generation gap aside and redefines the meaning of love and trust.

Principal photography on "Here Today" begins in New York in October.

"I'm so grateful to get the chance to bring this charming and beautiful story to life," said Crystal. "To write this with Alan was a joy, and to have Tiffany as my co-star is fantastic. The generational differences in our comedy will be great to play with. She's explosively funny and genuinely human at the same time. Excited to explore all our possibilities together."

"Here Today" will mark the second collaboration between Crystal and Zweibel previously worked together in 2014 on Tony Award-winning "Billy Crystal: 700 Sundays". It was also previously announced that Crystal is at work on a musicalized version of his 1992 film, Mr. Saturday Night.

Crystal gained prominence in the 1970s for playing Jodie Dallas on the ABC sitcom Soap and became a Hollywood film star during the late 1980s and 1990s, appearing in the critical and box office successes When Harry Met Sally... (1989), City Slickers (1991), and Analyze This (1999) and providing THE VOICE of Mike Wazowski in the Monsters, Inc. franchise.

Crystal won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event for 700 Sundays, a two-act, one-man play, which he conceived and wrote about his parents and his childhood growing up on Long Island. He toured throughout the US with the show in 2006 and then Australia in 2007.

Following the initial success of the play, Crystal wrote the book 700 Sundays for Warner Books, which was published on October 31, 2005. In conjunction with the book and the play that also paid tribute to his uncle, Milt Gabler, Crystal produced two CD compilations: Billy Crystal Presents: The Milt Gabler Story, which featured his uncle's most influential recordings from Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" to "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets; and Billy Remembers Billie featuring Crystal's favorite Holiday recordings. In the fall of 2013, he brought the show back to Broadway for a two-month run at the Imperial Theatre. HBO filmed the January 3-4, 2014 performances for a special, which debuted on their network on April 19, 2014.

Haddish has starred in "Girls Trip," "Night School," "Nobody's Fool" and "The Kitchen," and will be the host of the upcoming series "Kids Say the Darnedest Things.

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