Kumail Nanjiani to Star in Movie Version of “Any Person, Living or Dead”

The Oscar nominee plays a scientist whose time-travel experiment has hiccups.

Kumail Nanjiani in 2018. (Getty Images)
Kumail Nanjiani in 2018. (Getty Images)
Getty Images

Time travel always sounds like a fantastic idea on paper, but there are always unexpected hiccups in practice.

That’s the premise of Any Person, Living or Dead, a new movie starring actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani as a reclusive scientist who dreams of gathering history’s biggest brains to take on the major issues facing humanity, reports Slash Film. Based on a short story by Simon Rich, who will write the screenplay, the film is set to be directed by Jonathan Krisel.

The plot revolves around Nanjiani’s inventor who creates “his own time machine – but his big ‘meeting of the minds’ doesn’t go according to plan,” according to Slash Film. If you’ve ever seen a movie with a time machine, that’s no surprise. Time is a delicate continuum — one change here, shifts everything there.

At 31, Nanjiani’s career has shifted into high following his  Oscar nomination for writing the 2017 hit, The Big Sick. By Slash Film’s account,  he has since been in “four movies, three TV series, and two video games — and that’s not even counting his ongoing starring role in HBO’s Silicon Valley, his appearance in Jordan Peele’s new reboot of The Twilight Zone, his soon-to-be-released buddy action comedy film Stuber opposite Dave Bautista, or his upcoming Apple TV series Little America.”

His star turn in Any Person, Living or Dead affirms Nanjiani’s status as an in-demand  guy — one who may actually need to build himself a down-time machine.

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