Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Watch James Corden, John Krasinski get fired from classic films in late-night sketch


James Corden’s Late Late Show adventures are always wonderfully absurd. The actor was recently almost killed by Matt Damon in a Jason Bourne sketch, and now his show has released a new video in which he and John Krasinski claim that they worked on some of history’s greatest films, only to be fired each time.

Krasinski was on the show to promote The Hollars, an upcoming film he stars in and directed, and he teamed up with Corden on the video. In it, they claim that they’ve been working together for decades and that their underappreciated partnership was once the subject of a 2014 short documentary. They offer up entertaining footage as well, highlighting their ill-fated roles in movies like A Few Good Men, Gone with the Wind, and Pulp Fiction.

Recommended Videos

The pair explains that their “electric” chemistry comes from having worked together since 1939. Their first film was what Corden calls “a little movie called Gone with the Wind.” The Late Late Show host was set to play Scarlett O’Hara, and the Office alum was meant to fill the role of Rhett Butler. Unfortunately, they couldn’t make it work. After a slap fight and literal mic drop, the producers sent them packing.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

We see still more of their double failures, from being unable to deliver a key line in Pulp Fiction without breaking out into Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise to going overboard in A Few Good Men. Finally, though, we see success — but only for one of them. The sad end to their partnership apparently came about after Krasinski, who was playing the wife of Corden’s baker in Into the Woods, was replaced by his real-life wife, Emily Blunt.

Corden and Krasinski really do have great chemistry, and it would be great to see a project featuring them both actually be made. In the meantime, The Hollars hits theaters on August 26.

Stephanie Topacio Long
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Stephanie Topacio Long is a writer and editor whose writing interests range from business to books. She also contributes to…
‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ director says the movie has ‘the most difficult thing we’ve ever done’
Tom Cruise stares with a concerned look on his face.

The Mission: Impossible movies are known at this point for including at least one death-defying stunt from star Tom Cruise. Cruise seems hellbent on putting his life in danger for the benefit of audiences, and thus far, that dedication has led to some pretty excellent movies.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning may or may not be the final installment in the franchise, but director Christopher McQuarrie is already suggesting that the movie has one of the biggest stunts in the franchise's history. In speaking with Empire (per GamesRadar), he said that the film contains "the most difficult thing" they've ever done with the series. Unfortunately, he didn't go into detail about what the sequence involved.

Read more
Adam Scott learned to run for the ‘Severance’ opening sequence by watching Tom Cruise
Adam Scott holds blue balloons in Severance season 2.

Few men in the history of cinema have more famous runs than Tom Cruise, so it makes sense that Adam Scott turned to the movie star when it came time for his major running sequence in the Severance season 2 premiere.

Scott discussed the opening scene with executive producer and director Ben Stiller on the official Severance podcast and also explained just how long the sequence took to shoot.

Read more
20 years ago, they brought a John Carpenter classic into the 2000s
Laurence Fishburne and Drea de Matteo crouch by a window in a shot from the 2005 movie Assault on Precinct 13.

The first thing you miss is the music. That funky, synthesizer throb. That heartbeat of stone-cold menace. Everyone loves the iconic tinkle of John Carpenter’s Halloween theme, but two years earlier, he composed a score every bit as infectiously stark, instantly setting the tone of his low-budget 1976 thriller Assault on Precinct 13. When Hollywood got around to remaking Assault in 2005, they went a different way musically. (The trend of modern genre movies with throwback electronic soundtracks was still a few years off.) Right from the jump, you feel the difference. The conspicuous absence of vintage Carpenter boogie is merely the most audible sign that a minimalist classic has been fruitlessly maximalized.

In the dubious field of remaking John Carpenter movies (a matter on which the director himself has been bluntly, hilariously pragmatic), the 21st-century Assault on Precinct 13 sits far from the bottom. It might, in fact, be the cream of a crop that includes an entirely forgettable upgrade of The Fog that opened just a few months later, a redundant prequel to The Thing, and Rob Zombie’s numbingly extreme Halloween. But the aughts Assault, which turns 20 years old today, also neatly illustrates and maybe exemplifies how these do-overs go wrong: They always manage to sacrifice the elegant simplicity of Carpenter’s work. 

Read more