Ray, Kevin, Dave Attack the Big Screen

By Stephen M. Silverman

Monday May 03, 2004 09:00 AM EDT

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For Ray Romano, Kevin James and Dave Chappelle, the screen just can't get big enough. All three TV luminaries are set to make new movies.

Though Romano's recent Welcome to Mooseport, which marked his feature-film-performance debut, fizzled at the box office, the star of Everybody Loves Raymond is about to costar in a big-screen project with The King of Queens star Kevin James, says the Hollywood Reporter.

The movie, Grilled, is being billed as a comedy for New Line Cinema (which like PEOPLE is part of Time Warner) in which the CBS funnymen play meat salesmen who stop at nothing to ply their trade.

Shooting will begin next month, under director Jason Ensler, whose best-known work has also been for TV (Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Three's Company and Martha Inc.: The Story of Martha Stewart).

For James, 39, this will mark his feature debut. Romano, 46, made his first movie as the voice of Manfred the wooly mammoth in 2002's computer-generated animated movie Ice Age.

Meanwhile, Chappelle, 30, of Comedy Central's Chappelle's Show, is also in talks with New Line for a satiric comedy that might be called Dave Chappelle's Family History of the World, in which he and his relatives would shake up actual events that changed the world.

Chappelle's film credits already include Mel Brooks's 1993 comedy Robin Hood: Men in Tights, 2002's Undercover Brother (in which he basically played himself) and the 1997 Nicolas Cage dud Con Air.