Seth Rogen's Monster Year

Luckily, Rogen can afford to take a risk on Observe and Report. He follows it with his biggest-budget movie to date, Apatow’s return to the directing chair, the mordant summer comedy Funny People, co-starring Adam Sandler, which opens July 31.

And Rogen is clearly happy to be back calling the shots as executive producer and co-writer with Goldberg on Green Hornet, Sony’s comic-book action feature. Finding the right director took an extra six months after Asian martial-arts expert Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle) left the project over creative differences. “He just didn’t want to make the movie we wanted to make and we didn’t really want to make the movie he wanted to make,” says Rogen. “It’s a difference in sensibility. It would be very hard for someone who’s never made a movie in America, who doesn’t speak the language well, to direct a $100 million action movie. That became very clear to everyone.” (Chow is staying on, however, to play sidekick Kato.)

Returning to square one, Rogen, Goldberg, and producer Neil Moritz started dating directors again. “You meet people, you sit down, have lunch with them,” he riffs. “You see if they like you and you like them. It’s a weird process, but we found our guy.” Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) starts shooting at the end of June for release in 2010.

“As long as Seth keeps making interesting choices he’ll be around,” says Hill. During production, no matter how rough things got, hearing Rogen’s chuckle always cheered him up. “It’s the best laugh in Hollywood.”

Anne Thompson launched the daily ThompsononHollywood blog in March 2007, when she joined Variety as a columnist. Previously, she was deputy film editor of The Hollywood Reporter, where she wrote the weekly syndicated column "Risky Business" and the Riskybizblog. She has also served as west coast editor of Premiere and Film Comment, and senior writer at Entertainment Weekly.