Archer TV show image. Credit: FX.
The seventh season of FX‘s Archer TV show ended with a cliffhanger finale, which leaves the title character’s fate in question. Archer has not been cancelled, but has not yet been renewed for an eighth season. Last month, FX reduced the animated spy drama’s season seven episode order from 13 to 10.
The Daily Beast‘s Marlow Stern asked Archer EPs and Matt Thompson and Casey Willis about a full-length Archer feature film. While the duo said it is up to creator Adam Reed, the subject does arise. If its made and if it is live-action, they’d love to cast Mad Men‘s Jon Hamm as Sterling Archer, perhaps with H. Jon Benjamin’s voice.
Archer TV show, season seven on FX. Pictured: H. Jon Benjamin
CR: Ray Mickshaw/FX.
Benjamin voices the animated title character in FX’s Archer TV series. Here is more from The Daily Beast:
“It’s all up to whatever Adam [Reed] wants to do, but he and I have definitely talked about it,” Thompson tells The Daily Beast. “I think we talk about it once every two years. We vacillate between if you do it, why are you doing the TV show? And should it be live-action, or should it be cartoon? The talk is there, we just still haven’t decided. I don’t think there will be a movie before the last episode of Archer airs on TV. I don’t think we’ll make a movie before the series finishes.”
As far as casting Sterling Archer (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin) in a potential live-action Archer film, well, the team has only one actor in mind.
“It’s Jon Hamm,” says Thompson, firmly. “If Archer goes live-action, I do believe it will be Jon Hamm. Maybe you could do it with Jon Benjamin’s voice coming out of him? I don’t know. Adam is always like, ‘I don’t know if I want the movie to be live-action because I want it to be Jon Benjamin!’ But if it is live-action—and if it is not Jon Benjamin—it is our greatest hope that it would be Jon Hamm. I can say that with confidence.”
As fans of the show will know, Hamm guest-starred as Captain Hank Murphy, who takes over Cheryl’s brother Cecil’s underwater laboratory armed with missiles of VX nerve gas—only to be crushed by an off-brand soda machine. His cameo came in the two-part fourth season finale “Sea Tunt,” a parody of the ’70s animated series Sealab 2020.
When I asked Reed back in 2014 about casting Archer—who was modeled after real-life ex-model Jason Fitzgerald—in a potential live-action film, well, his mind went to Jon Hamm, too. Heck, there’s even a Tumblr called Sterling Archer Draper Pryce that mashes up Draper scenes with Archer quotes.
“We’re working on a way to create an H. Jon Hamm Benjamin hybrid,” he told me, while also expanding a bit on how much Archer was influenced by the look of Mad Men. “The production and costume design obviously owe a great deal to Mad Men’s repopularizing the 1960s aesthetic, and Archer’s character model is just lucky enough to be that handsome in real life. Which is probably why he’s a model, now that I think about it.”
Archer TV show, season seven on FX. Pictured: Sterling Archer (voice of H. Jon Benjamin). CR: FX.
What do you think? Are you a fan of the Archer TV series? Would you like to see Jon Hamm play a live-action version of Archer?
