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Alec Baldwin has been in the headlines lately more for what he's not going to do (backing out of Rock of Ages, ending his run on 30 Rock after next season) than what he is. However, today he announced that he has accepted a part in the Will Ferrell / Adam McKay football comedy Turkey Bowl.

Turkey Bowl, acquired by Warner Brothers earlier this week, tells the story of a Thanksgiving day football rivalry between the working-class Mark Wahlberg family and the well-to-do Will Ferrell family. Alec Baldwin joins the cast as Wahlberg's father, a Kennedy-obsessed patriarch (with a wicked-good Boston accent?) who tasks Wahlberg with leading the family team to victory. Those who saw this movie as a re-teaming of The Other Guys, the Ferrell-Wahlberg cop comedy, might be surprised to know that the original source was actually reuniting Wahlberg and Baldwin, who worked together on Martin Scorsese's The Departed.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, writer / producer Adam McKay (who worked with Ferrell and Wahlberg on The Other Guys) stated that "the idea was originally conceived for Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin. Owen Burke, who’s a producer at Gary Sanchez, and I were talking about how crazily funny Wahlberg and Baldwin were in The Departed — how, even though it’s not a comedy, we could just watch them all day long ... Then Will heard it and he wanted in."

And if the Ferrell / Wahlberg / Baldwin casting news wasn't good enough,  Deadline reports that "the tackle games are grandiose, and ... they plan to pack it with fun cameos, just the way they did during the rival broadcaster gang fights in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy." If they sing another a cappella song, a-la 'Afternoon Delight', this might be my favorite movie ever.

Some of the supporting cast are already being recruited. Rob Riggle (The Daily Show, 21 Jump Street Movie) has been written in as a gay cousin who has fallen out with the family but who is really good at football, so Wahlberg's team needs him. McKay also noted Jeremy Renner as someone he'd like to have in the film, to play an ex-con. "The idea is to bring in, like, 15 people that we love and just do a big, funny holiday movie." Turkey Bowl has been retitled tentatively as Three Mississippi, and is scheduled for release Thanksgiving 2012.

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