KEY POINTS:
2007 will be known as the year the geeks took over Hollywood.
In the 1980s, the Rob Lowe and Demi Moore-led Brat Pack ruled and in the 1990s big teeth took over, with Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts and Jim Carrey pocketing US$20 million ($29 million) a film.
Then, in the new millennium, natural beauty staked a claim in Hollywood, with actors who could be models - Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie and Cameron Diaz - the kings and queens.
Midway through 2007, however, it all went pear-shaped - literally.
Hollywood's most bankable suddenly had beer guts instead of six-pack abs or were scrawny instead of buffed.
Freakish genes were replaced by average looking dudes in crumpled jeans, unfashionable beards and goofy glasses.
Tanned, perfect skin was replaced by pale, unshaven fellas with bad diets, hygiene and R-rated senses of humour.
While Pitt, Clooney and pals have had a few hits, they've had plenty of box office bombs as well, making them unreliable earners, while the nerds have an envious record.
One particular crew of nerds, headed by Judd Apatow, appears to have created the magic formula for turning US$20 million budgeted R-rated comedies into US$180 million box office hits - the type of profit margin that has studio execs licking their lips.
Yes, all hail the Nerd Herd.
Apatow is a 39-year-old New York-born man of average height, ordinary looks and unfashionable beard, but a writer-director-producer with a golden touch.
He unearths acting talent, casts them in his movies, and then watches as they become stars.
Steve Carell, Seth Rogen and his latest protege, Jonah Hill, can all thank Apatow for their rise from quirky, reliable support actors to bona-fide Hollywood stars.
Rogen, a rotund Canadian actor with a cartoon character-like laugh, particularly, has tied himself to Apatow.
Apatow first cast Rogen on the short-lived, but cultish 1999-2000 TV series, Freaks and Geeks, and another TV series in 2001, Undeclared.
Rogen also scored a small part in the 2004 comedy, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, which Apatow produced.
It was the 2005 comedy, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, written, directed and produced by Apatow, that cemented Apatow's place in Hollywood, skyrocketed Carell's career to the A-List and opened the door for Rogen and Hill, who had one scene but stole plenty of laughs, to star in their own feature films.
Made for just US$26 million, The 40-Year-Old Virgin went on to earn US$177 million at the box office.
Apatow followed it up with Knocked Up, starring Rogen and Grey's Anatomy's Katherine Heigl, and Superbad, starring Rogen and Hill.
Knocked Up cost US$30 million to make but collected US$185 million worldwide when it was released this year, while Superbad, with a smaller budget of US$20 million, was the number one film in the US when it opened in August, making US$33 million on its first weekend.
It continues to cash in in the US, earning US$103 million so far, and is expected to make another US$80 million when it hits Australia, Asian and European theatres in coming weeks.
Just like other Apatow films, Superbad is a simple story about nerdy guys.
It follows three high school kids (played by Hill, Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse) over one day as they try to buy alcohol for a party with a fake ID.
Rogen, who has a starring role as a rogue cop, wrote the Superbad script more than a decade ago with his childhood friend in Vancouver, Evan Goldberg. Most of the scenes are based on incidents in their teenage years.
The Superbad script's evolution from the typewriter of two 13-year-olds in Canada to the number one film in North America is a typical, and frustrating, rags to riches Hollywood story.
Rogen first showed Apatow the script in 2001 when they were working on Undeclared.
"The first draft he showed me was hilarious," said Apatow.
"It didn't have as much heart as what it needed, and didn't seem to have a central emotional idea, but the seeds of it were in there."
The then virtually unknown Rogen and Goldberg had had no luck shopping it around Hollywood and Apatow, who added some of his magic to the script but had yet to become the golden boy, also failed to find any interest in it.
"I thought if I get a hit, a studio will let us make Superbad," Apatow said. "When Anchorman did well I mailed it out to the studios again, but they all said no.
"Then 40-Year-Old Virgin did well and I mailed the script out again, and they said no again."
Rogen and Goldberg also hit the pavement and knocked on the front doors of all the big and small Hollywood studios.
"I can't name how many studios almost made this movie over the last 10 years, but ultimately chickened out," Rogen, 25, said.
"We were told the content was just too filthy. There was one producer who was going to make the movie eight different times. He really tried, but couldn't get it made.
"Then a few years later he actually became the president of a studio and we thought 'awesome, now it's time' but he wouldn't even make it.
"We thought it would never get made. But, it's so funny now when we run into all of the people who didn't make it and they say 'we knew it would be a success, we knew it'.
"We're like 'f*** you. Great, well why didn't you make it'?"
Then, out of the blue, Rogen, Goldberg and Apatow heard through the grapevine that Sony, looking for an R-Rated comedy, could be interested.
"It came out of nowhere," Rogen said. "We just heard 'Sony wants to read Superbad'."
It sent Rogen and Goldberg into a panic as so many studios had read the script and suggested changes, that it was no longer in a form they were happy with.
One studio ordered one of the most infamous scenes in Superbad, which involved period blood, cut out, but Rogen and Goldberg were desperate to keep it in the script they offered to Sony.
"So, we had to go back and put the period blood scene back in because we were like 'f*** it, if they're going to read it, let's give them the full deal'," Rogen said.
Sony snapped it up and, from the opening North American weekend alone, made its money back. Apatow, Rogen, Goldberg, Hill, Carrell and the rest of Apatow's nerd herd are also cashing in.
Apatow is producing, directing or writing the scripts for seven upcoming films. Rogen and Goldberg have written another R-Rated comedy, Pineapple Express, which is set for release next year and Rogen has five other acting gigs in the works.
Hill, 23, has four new films, while Carrell is earning more than US$5 million a movie and has successfully filled Ricky Gervais' role in the US version of the British sitcom, The Office.
Rogen and Goldberg say they are living a dream, with the pair recently inking a deal with Sony to make the US$100 million-plus comic book superhero film adaption of The Green Hornet. Rogen will star as The Green Hornet and co-write the script with Goldberg.
"We went to Sony and said we want to make a balls-to-the-wall crazy action movie and they said 'yes' and I could be in it," Rogen said.
His biggest task, however, will be losing the love handles and chiselling himself into superhero shape.
"I plan on being the first actor in history to lose weight for a role," Rogen said, tongue-in-cheek.
"I think it's going to start a trend."
What: Superbad
When: Opens next Thursday
AAP
