Kline & Holmes Head Up New Film Comedy 'THE EXTRA MAN'

Kevin Kline, Katie Holmes, Paul Dano and John C Reilly will make up the cast of "The Extra Man," a comedy that will begin production in February in New York. Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini of American Splendor fame will direct.

The film is based on a novel by Jonathan Ames; Pulcini and Springer Berman wrote the script with the author. The two last directed the film "The Nanny Diaries."

Kevin Kline  has won Tony Awards for the musicals On the Twentieth Century and The Pirates of Penzance and most recently starred on Broadway in Cyrano de Bergerac. He also won the Academy Award for A Fish Called Wanda.

Katie Holmes made her Broadway debut in recent hit revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons.

Paul Dano starred Off-Broadway in Things We Want and is featured in the film There Will Be Blood.

John C. Reilly's Broadway credits include True West and A Streetcar Named Desire among other stage productions.  On film he has a long and varied list of credits including the recent Step Brothers with Will Ferrell and played Amos Hart in the film version of the hit musical Chicago.

In "The Extra Man", Kline will play a failed playwright who works as an escort for rich widows on the Upper East Side. He develops a mentor-student relationship with a troubled aspiring playwright (Dano).

"This is a film for our times, these hilarious characters living on the edge of enormous wealth, scrapping for small pieces of the pie," Bregman said regarding the film. "I suspect a lot of people will be able to identify nowadays."