The Boy Who Lived becomes The Boy Who Got Ripped in the first footage of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. In one of the year’s most bizarre casting decisions, Daniel Radcliffe was recently announced as the first A-List actor to star as Weird Al Yankovic in an upcoming Roku Channel biopic, and now, we’re finally getting to see that vision—and it’s about as bizarre as you’d expect.
Unless, of course, you expected Daniel Radcliffe with insanely chiseled abs and biceps with a Weird Al perm to stir extreme, if confusing, levels of sexual attraction.
It’s hard to describe what Daniel Radcliffe looks like in this first clip, but it’s certainly not Weird Al Yankovic. Harry Potter picking up a side gig as a clown at a kid’s birthday party? The grown-up, buff, musically talented version of Jonah Hill’s character from Superbad? A Weird Al impersonator on a budget?
But also…those muscles.
Still, Radcliffe has a great time stripping down, whipping out the accordion, chopping through a forest, and singing those classic Weird Al hits (“Like a Surgeon” is prominently featured) in the trailer. It may not be the perfect recreation of a celeb, but neither was the unofficial Celine Dion biopic Aline—the more nuttiness, the better.
“Anyone got an accordion?” Radcliffe says, prompting the actualization of three keyboarded instruments.
After his Harry Potter career, Radcliffe has taken a liking to more eccentric films like Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. Most recently, the actor starred in the Sandra Bullock action-comedy The Lost City, preceded by Swiss Army Man, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend, and Guns Akimbo.
In Weird, he’ll star alongside Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, Julianne Nicholson as his wife Suzanne, Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento, and James Preston Rogers as Hulk Hogan. The Funny or Die production will be directed by Eric Appel, who co-wrote the script with Yankovic himself based on a fake trailer starring Aaron Paul.
Though the whole trailer is absolutely bonkers, the most shocking aspect of the project, as a whole, is the under-the-radar streaming destination. If fans of Daniel Radcliffe, Al Yankovic, or music biopics want to catch a glimpse of Weird, they’re going to have to figure out a way to stream the Roku Channel. It’s not even Showtime, Starz, or any of the other diet Netflix/Hulu streamers only half the world subscribes to—it’s The Roku Channel.
What else would you be signing up for with a subscription to The Roku Channel? All of Quibi’s library, a Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist Christmas special, and a few other strands of loose content. You’ll get all that and more after you subscribe to The Roku Channel to watch Weird: The Al Yankovic story when it releases this fall.
