The Grand is an upcoming improv comedy film written and directed by Zak Penn. The film has an ensemble cast including Ray Romano, Woody Harrelson, Chris Parnell, Werner Herzog, Jason Alexander, and Cheryl Hines.
The film's style is similar to the films of Christopher Guest (Penn himself states this zak_penns_at_the_gra.php" target="_blank">http://www.comingsoon.net/blog/2007/04/interview_zak_penns_at_the_gra.php ), where each actor is given direction concerning their character, and the actors are left to improvise each individual scene. The plot of The Grand was somewhat more open-ended than Guest's work, however. The focus of the film is a poker tournament played at the _Golden Nugget in Las Vegas between the characters in which real poker matches were played by the actors as the scenes were filmed. The film's script did not specify the winner of the tournament, and the ending of the film was determined by the actual game played on set .
The film debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival, and will be released theatrically by Anchor Bay Entertainment in early 2008 .
