Tagline: Harold Crick isn’t ready to go. Period.
In “Stranger Than Fiction,” Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, an IRS Agent whose world is turned upside-down when he begins to hear his life being chronicled by a narrator only he can hear. The Narrator, Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a nearly forgotten author of tragic novels, is struggling to complete her latest and best book, unaware that her protagonist is alive and uncontrollably guided by her words. Fiction and reality collide when the bewildered and hilariously resistant Harold hears the Narrator say that events have been set in motion that will lead to his imminent death.
Desperate to escape his fate, Harold seeks help from eccentric English professor Dr. Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) and finds unexpected comfort in a burgeoning romance with a defiant audit subject, Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Unluckily for Harold, Kay’s impatient publishers have unleashed a stern assistant to help the author finish her book and finish off Harold Crick.
About the Production
“This is a story about a man named Harold Crick… and his wristwatch.Harold Crick was a man of infinite numbers, endless calculations and remarkably few words. And his wristwatch said even less.” — The Narrator
After ten years of painstaking work, novelist Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) is nearing completion on her latest, and potentially finest, book. Her only remaining challenge is to figure out how to kill off her main character, Harold Crick. Little does she know that Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is inexplicably alive-and-well in the real world, and suddenly aware of her words.
Fiction and reality collide when the bewildered and hilariously resistant Harold hears what she has in mind and realizes he must find a way to change her (and his) ending. Columbia Pictures and Mandate Pictures’ Stranger Than Fiction is a heartfelt comedy about taking the life you have and making it the one you’ve always wanted.
One morning, a seemingly average and generally solitary IRS agent named Harold Crick begins to hear a female voice narrating his every action, thought and feeling in alarmingly precise detail. Harold’s carefully controlled life is turned upside down by this narration only he can hear, and when the voice declares that Harold Crick is facing imminent death, he realizes he must find out who is writing his story and persuade her to change the ending.
The voice in Harold’s head turns out to be the once celebrated, but now nearly forgotten, novelist Karen “Kay” Eiffel (Emma Thompson), who is struggling to find an ending for what might be her best book. Her only remaining challenge is to figure out a way to kill her main character, but little does she know that Harold Crick is alive and well and inexplicably aware of her words and her plans for him. To make matters worse, Kay’s publisher has dispatched a hard-nosed “assistant,” Penny Escher (Queen Latifah), to force Kay to finish her novel and finish off Harold Crick.
Desperate to take control of his destiny and avoid an untimely demise, Harold seeks help from a literary theorist named Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who suggests that Harold might be able to change his fate by turning his story from a tragedy into a comedy. Professor Hilbert suggests that Harold try to follow one of comedy’s most elemental formulas: a love story between two people who hate each other. His suggestion leads Harold to initiate an unlikely romance with a free-spirited baker named Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal).
As Harold experiences true love and true life for the first time, he becomes convinced that he has escaped his fate, as his story seems to be taking on all the trappings of a comedy in which he will not, and cannot, die. But Harold is unaware that in a Karen Eiffel tragedy, the lead characters always die at exactly the moment when they have the most to live for. Harold and Kay find themselves in unexplored territory as each must weigh the value of a single human existence against what might just be an immortal work of art: a novel about life and death — and taxes.
These production notes provided by Columbia Pictures.
Stranger Than Fiction
Starring: Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah, Emma Thompson, Martha Espinoza
Directed by: Marc Forster
Screenplay by: Zach Helm
Release Date: November 10, 2006
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for disturbing images, sexuality, language, nudity.
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $40,660,952 (75.8%)
Foreign: $12,992,229 (24.2%)
Total: $53,653,181 (Worldwide)