TVSquad

It looks like even the magic formula that Will Ferrell and Adam McKay created to become comedy movie mavericks doesn't work on the aptly named "idiot box."

HBO's new Eastbound & Down bombed in its premiere episode and lost nearly 40 percent of the lead-in audience from Flight of the Conchords. It also only scored a measly .3 in the ratings, which is dangerously close to "HelloLarrydom."

But fear not, Ferrell freaks. This is HBO, the network that dared to mess with convention, give fledgling shows time to grow and kept Arli$$ on the air for six whole seasons.

This one caught me a little bit by surprise. If you had told me the Funny Or Die guys were getting a TV show, I would have guessed Comedy Central, TBS, VH1, or something like that. Instead, HBO has ponied up the dollars to buy a stake in the company. HBO's interest is believed to be less than 10% of the company, but it also comes with an order for ten half hour episodes.

The deal came about thanks to the relationship built when HBO worked with Will Ferrell and Adam McKay on the upcoming series Eastbound And Down. It went well enough that the network was looking for more projects to work on with the group. It's unclear just what form Funny Or Die will take on HBO. Ferrell talks about keeping their options open, suggesting that it could be "... anything from a funny offbeat talk show to a maybe more-traditional-type sitcom to a show with puppets". The only clue being that they want to keep the new show in the same family of comedy as what they have presented on the website. An example of that comedy is embedded, after the jump.

Here's yet another funny video from Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's video site, FunnyOrDie.com. This short piece was written and directed by Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) and features Willem Dafoe, Andy Richter and Will Ferrell as office workers who have a special procedure performed on themselves that initially seems like a good idea, with major regrets occurring later. I can't go into too much detail without ruining the video for you, so skip to the bottom of this post and watch it.

Richter and Ferrell are always funny, but it's also nice to see a "serious" actor like Dafoe really putting himself into something this silly. Even though he's the only non-comedian in the whole short, he's by far the best part. Someone should give that man more comedic roles, like in The Last Temptation of Christ. That movie was hilarious.

Last September, Brett told you about a new HBO pilot being created for HBO called P.E. Well, that pilot is still happening, but now it's called East Bound and Down. The plot remains the same, though: a washed-up professional baseball player winds up back in his Southern hometown and becomes a substitute gym teacher.

The new comedy comes from actor Will Ferrell and his writing partner Adam McKay's Gary Sanchez Productions. The men previously worked on Saturday Night Live together and later on the films Anchorman and Talladega Nights. Newcomer Danny R. McBride (who also co-created the series and wrote the script along with Jody Hill and Ben Best) will star as Kenny, the pitiful pitcher, along with Katy Mixon, John Hawkes and Andrew Daly. Mixon plays Kenny's former high school girlfriend, who is now engaged to the principal (Andrew Daly). Kenny's brother will be played by Hawkes.

Okay, whether you found Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's video The Landlord extremely funny, or you were offended by the fact that it featured McKay's daughter, Pearl, cursing (and yes, she really was cursing), I think there's one thing we can all agree on: Pearl is really, really, adorable.

Check out the outtakes from the video below. You would have to be a vampire with a heart carved out of baby nightmares to not total fall in love with the little tyke. I think in some ways the outtakes are almost funnier than the finished product, since it shows Pearl behaving like an actual kid (i.e., she doesn't really care what all those crazy adults around her are doing, she just wants to bang some rocks together).

Anyway, check it out after the jump and have a larf.

Conan O'Brien, host of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Adam McKay, co-writer and director of Talladega Nights and Anchorman and father of the infamous Pearl, have at least one thing in common: they both worked on Saturday Night Live. The other thing they have in common is that they were each interviewed recently by two different publications.

O'Brien was interviewed by StarWars.com to coincide with the recent taping of his show in San Francisco (George Lucas was a guest on the program). This was my favorite exchange:

What was your favorite part of visiting Lucasfilm/ILM when you were here in San Francisco?

The part when Lucas took me into a glass elevator. It smashed through the roof and he told me the entire chocolate factory was mine. That poor man has lost his mind.

Ever since I linked to the short video by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell on their new comedy competition site, FunnyOrDie.com, there's been a lot of speculation among myself and my readers as to just how it was they got the little girl in the video, McKay's daughter Pearl, to curse like a drunken sailor.

I assumed she wasn't, that it was probably just a bit of mind trickery using subtitles to make it appear she's saying something she isn't. However, McKay told People that wasn't the case:

I recently linked to a comedic short featuring Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights). The short comes from FunnyorDie.com, a new comedy video site from Ferrell and McKay's production company, Gary Sanchez Productions.

The short, titled "The Landlord," has received over two million hits, and other vids from established comedians and actors will also begin to pop up on the site. However, most of the videos will be uploaded YouTube-fashion by regular folks like you and me. The main difference between this site and YouTube is that only those videos deemed worthy by other users will survive, and the ones that aren't so funny will be banished to a section of the site known as "the Crypt."

This is the funniest thing you will see today. Seriously, check it out.

Why are you still here? Go watch this video. Right now*.

Adam McKay and Will Ferrell, both formerly of Saturday Night Live (Ferrell as a performer, and McKay as a writer) have made two of the funniest movie comedies in the last few years, Anchorman and Talladega Nights, and this short featuring McKay and Ferrell as two roommates and their cranky landlord had me laughing so hard that milk spilled from my nose -- not milk I was drinking, but milk I haven't even drank yet. That's how incredibly funny it is. The short is only about two minutes long, and I can't tell you much more about it without spoiling it for you, so go watch it.