Todd Phillips Sets Due Date and Hangover Sequel

The Hangover director Todd Phillips will next direct the road trip comedy Due Date, and then will follow that one year later with The Hangover 2.

According to Variety, the commitments come one day after The Hangover crossed the $210 million domestic gross mark and surpassed Wedding Crashers to become the second biggest grossing R-rated comedy ever.

Zach Galifianakis will play one of the two leads in Due Date, an Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland script that was revised by Adam Sztykiel. In the comedy about fatherhood, an expectant dad and his unlikely travel companion (Galifianakis) race cross-country in hopes of making it home for the birth of his first child.

Both Due Date and The Hangover 2 will follow the same production track as The Hangover. The plan is for the Due Date shoot to begin Oct. 6, and the film will be released next year in the first weekend of June, just like The Hangover. The sequel will begin production in October 2010 and will be released Memorial Day weekend 2011.

Warner Bros. hired Phillips and Scot Armstrong to begin writing The Hangover 2 right after early test scores left the studio optimistic that it had a winner.

The film has become WB's biggest grossing comedy ever, trailing only Beverly Hills Cop ($234 million) in grosses for an R-rated comedy. Studio believes The Hangover will finish around $240 million to become the biggest domestic grossing comedy ever and the third highest grossing R-rated film ever, behind The Passion of the Christ and The Matrix Reloaded.