Jonah Hill has Pure Imagination

Judd Apatow, the man who brought us The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, is the comedy equivalent of Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars – he’s planning to unleash his apprentices on all of Hollywood.

But while Judd keeps busy directing, producing and avoiding large, inexplicably unguarded shafts, his comedy Sith warriors are spreading.

His latest nurtured talent nabbing the spotlight is Jonah Hill, last seen as stoner roommate Jonah in Knocked Up, and about to appear in Superbad.

Hill told Total Film around the time of Accepted (in which he co-starred with Die Hard 4.0’s Justin Long) that Apatow was helping him get his own scripts shoved around the studios, and now, talking to MTV, he’s got them going. The first, Middle Child, about a sibling unfairly treated by his parents when the first son they gave up for adoption returns to the fold, is already out to directors.

But he also has Pure Imagination, which he and Apatow have set up at Sony. “Basically, I go through a bunch of traumatic stuff, and I develop an imaginary friend,” he blabbed. “Then what happens is I meet a girl, and we start dating…but the problem is I don’t know whether she actually exists or whether she’s a figment of my imagination.”

Sounds like good stuff, and while it might break the mould of regular Apatow comedies and dabble in some CGI, it will stick to his core ideas of being about people: It’s essentially a relationship movie, but the whole time I’m trying to avoid finding out whether she’s real or not,” Hill explained. “I don’t want to know, basically. And then, my best friend who I go to for advice, is an imaginary person that I’ve made up in my mind.” With luck, it should be shooting next year.