How Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone and BriTANick went from ‘SNL’ to Hollywood

If you were watching YouTube in the late 2000s, chances are you came across the sketch comedy stylings of The Lonely Island and BriTANick. The Lonely Island is made up of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone, who are now Saturday Night Live comedy legends in their own right. They brought us the iconic music videos “Lazy Sunday,” “I’m on a Boat,” and “Dick in a Box.”

Around the same time, inspired by The Lonely Island, came another massively popular sketch group out of NYU made up of longtime friends Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher. They called themselves BriTANick. Their fast-paced absurdist minds gave us legendary video sketches such as “Boys Night In,” “Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer,” and “Sexy Pool Party.”

Mashable’s Executive Producer Mark Stetson met up with BriTANick and The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone to talk about their new film, Over Your Dead Body, a remake of Tommy Wirkola’s Norwegian dark comedy The Trip. McElhaney and Kocher wrote the script, while Taccone directs; the result is a comedic remake that stays delightfully close to the original while adding their own unique spin.

Samara Weaving and Jason Segel star as Lisa and Dan, a married couple who have grown absolutely sick of each other. Sure, to their friends or family, it seems like they’re planning a weekend getaway to Dan’s dad’s cabin to romantically reconnect. But really, what Dan has planned is what true crime fans would call an “alpine divorce,” meaning he’s plotting to murder his wife and make it look like a climbing accident.

Taccone and BriTANick took us on their career journeys starting out as sketch comedians making what are now-famous comedy videos for “$15 and some Mini DV tapes.” The Lonely Island had to borrow their camera from Bill Hader’s then-wife, director Maggie Carey, to film “Lazy Sunday,” while BriTANick had to do every bit of production themselves. According to McElhaney, “Now, everyone can do it. Back then, you had to know someone who had a FireWire cord and had a camera, and you had to know how to export from Final Cut Pro. Only the nerds knew how to do it.”

Taccone added, “It’s so nice that the barrier of entry has lowered so anyone can do it and be creative. But also because there is so much of it, the prices have all gone down. There is more you can do for not a lot of money. Which is why it’s so nice when you have the stamp of IFC, who is going to give you this amount of money to do something. You can actually do a substantial thing.”

Over Your Dead Body is now in theaters.