Richard Ayoade joins Neighborhood Watch

Richard Ayoade has landed a role in the new sci-fi comedy Neighborhood Watch, joining Ben Stiller (Tropic Thunder, Zoolander), Vince Vaughn (Dodgeball), Jonah Hill (Superbad) and Rosemarie DeWitt (Cinderella Man). The film revolves around a group of men who join the local neighborhood watch patrol to escape family life, only to start uncovering a major conspiracy.

Ayoade will play a recently-divorced man named Jamarcus, a part that Chris Tucker was also being considered for. Akiva Schaffer (Hot Rod) is directing the film, from a screenplay by Superbad writing partners Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, while Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Date Night) is listed as a producer.

Richard Ayoade is well-known for his roles in TV comedies like The IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh and Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. On the big screen, he wrote and directed Submarine and will be following that with an adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Double, starring Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network). Shooting on Neighborhood Watch is set to start later this month and the film is expected to be released in summer 2012.