It was reported yesterday that production on Aziz Ansari’s feature directorial debut Being Mortal was being suspended. Deadline has now said that the reason for that suspension has to do with a complaint made against Bill Murray for inappropriate behavior.
The nature of Bill Murray’s alleged inappropriate behavior hasn’t been revealed, but an investigation into the complaint is underway. Searchlight Pictures has said that it doesn’t comment on investigations, but Aziz Ansari and his producing partner Youree Henley have been working with the studio to figure out the next steps.
Being Mortal is based on Atul Gawande’s non-fiction book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. In addition to directing the film, Aziz Ansari also wrote the script and will star alongside Seth Rogen, Keke Palmer, and Bill Murray. There aren’t a lot of details about the film, but the book explores the concepts of death and aging and how the medical profession tends to mishandle both. Here’s the official description of the novel with more information:
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should. Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients’ anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them. And families go along with all of it.
Aziz Ansari will next be lending his voice to The Bob’s Burger Movie on May 27, 2022.