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| image courtesy Columbia Pictures |
Everyone remembers Ned Ryerson, - AKA “Ned The Head” and “Needlenose Ned” - the (quite literally) perpetually optimistic insurance salesman/former high school classmate of Bill Murray’s tv-weatherman Phil Connors, in the classic 1993 comedy, Groundhog Day (everyone, except for Phil himself).
Actor Stephen Tobolowski (Memento, Deadwood) who played Ryerson, recently guested on the Production Meeting Podcast and had this interesting bit of info to spill:
“There’s talk about a Groundhog Day series in the works. One of the producers - I was working on The Goldbergs or Schooled - one of those shows on the Sony lot, and one of them saw me and goes, ‘Oh Stephen! Stephen! We’re working on a Groundhog Day tv show. Could you be Ned for the tv show?’ I go, ‘Sure. Yeah. No problem’... But it’s Ned 30 years later. What has his life become?”
What indeed has become of the previously shingles afflicted, life insurance-slinging Ned in the years since Bill Murray’s character seemingly escaped an endless, daily time-loop in Punxsutawney Pennsylvania, during the eponymous, rodent-centric holiday?
Details are scant, so far. But the thought of a time-looping, comedic tv series (done to great effect recently on the Netflix hit, Russian Doll) is definitely intriguing.
Ned, and hopefully other familiar characters/cast members will be returning for the show, but who, and in what capacity remains unclear. It’s to be presumed that Bill Murray COULD possibly be involved at some level (he did revisit his Phil Conners role, alongside Tobolowski’s Ned in a recent Jeep commercial, after all).
Until more hard information is revealed, we here at The Movie Sleuth will consider this a “sourced rumor” about a project still in the very early development stages.
MR