Steve Carell: I felt a strong need to make an asteroid movie

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Steve Carell’s last episode of ‘The Office’ doesn’t air until April 28, but the Emmy-nominated actor is wasting no time jumping into his already successful film career.

Fans of ‘The Daily Show’ alum will next be able to see him opposite Julianne Moore and Ryan Gosling in a marital dramedy called ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’ which opens at the end of July. By then Carell will already be in production on ‘Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,’ another dramedy -- but one that centers on the end of days.

Written and directed by Lorene Scafaria (‘Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist’), the film tells of how a group of people react after they learn that the world is ending. Carell will play a man whose wife suddenly leaves him after learning that an asteroid is headed for the planet. He receives a letter from his high school sweetheart asking to spend the final days with him, and proceeds to go on a road trip with his neighbor, played by Keira Knightley, to meet her.

Carell says that the project, which aims to shoot in mid-May in Los Angeles, has exerted a strong pull on him -- and for reasons philosophical as much as filmic. ‘It’s one of those scripts that I read and I couldn’t stop thinking about,’ he told 24 Frames. ‘It’s one of those things that you read and then you ruminate about what would I do, and it forces people to ask those questions about themselves and what would you do in that situation.’

He added: ‘Some of it is so ridiculous, but it also seems plausible because all bets are off at that point.’

Carell is a master of walking a fine line between drama and comedy, and he’ll have a chance here to take his act to the high wire here.

‘It’s the flip side’ of the big, explosive,apocalyptic movie, he said. ‘We don’t see what the president’s talking about [in this movie], it’s what the dinner party is like the day after everybody has heard the news. How people interact with each other and how it changes all the rules. It’s how people put their lives in order and find their own importance and their own value. It’s a beautiful movie, I think.’

--Nicole Sperling