Steve Carell And Charlie Kaufman Team Up For Awesome Sounding IQ 83

Charlie Kaufman’s FX pilot, How and Why never made it to series, which is too bad and, unless I’m being totally naive, a little surprising. But maybe FX’s loss is our gain.

Deadline reports that Kaufman will do a page one rewrite of a long gestating project called IQ 83. The film will be an adaptation of Arthur Herzog’s 1978 novel in which a scientist accidentally unleashes a virus that gradually dumbs down the world’s population. The scientist has limited time to fix his screw up because he’s getting dumber too and soon won’t be able to science anymore. High stakes!

The film doesn’t have a director yet, but it does have Steve Carell for its lead. Tonally, this thing is still pretty up in the air, so it’s not clear if we’re getting funny Steve Carell or scary Penguin-looking Steve Carell. It’s a Charlie Kaufman script, though, so we’re probably getting a slightly awesome Steve Carell either way.