Jim Parsons To Play A BuzzFeed Editor In New Movie

Fans are used to seeing Jim Parsons play the wise-cracking and awkward Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory — but soon the actor playing a completely different character. The Emmy-winner will take on character who is the hippest of the hip — a Buzzfeed editor who went viral. According to Vulture, Jim Parsons will star in Buzzfeed first film Brother Orange. The actor will play Matt Stopera, an editor who started a friendship with the random man who ended up with his stolen iPhone all the way in China. The movie is in collaboration with Warner Brothers and will focus on the friendship — and viral internet story — that came to be when photos of and by a mysterious man started popping up on Stopera's replacement iPhone.

The story first got recognition in a BuzzFeed article by Stopera in which he describes how he lost his phone, got a new one, and started receiving pictures on his iCloud from a mysterious source. Based on context clues, these photos seemed to be taken in China and it appeared the photographer was a middle-aged guy taking selfies in front of an orange tree. Stopera described these photos and others on his phone taken by this mysterious person as "a glimpse into his life," but didn't hesitate to delete them when the people at the Genius bar told him to delete everything from the stolen phone and his iCloud, which would rendered his old phone completely useless.

Soon after, Stopera wrote in a follow-up BuzzFeed article that he found out that this story had become famous on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, and that those interested in the story were trying to connect the two men with the shared iCloud. Stopera wrote that Brother Orange (as the mystery man liked to be called) was "my long-lost brother or other dimension partner in crime." Eventually, the two men, Stopera and Brother Orange (whose actual name is Li Hongjun) met in China and spent time together — their completely different worlds bridged by a stolen iPhone.

This story sounds like a deeply touching one, and it will be interesting to see Parsons take on the role. Fans are so used to seeing the actor as snarky Sheldon, so it should be a nice change to see him as a man who will bond with another person across the world — and on an iCloud. But only time will tell if BuzzFeed's first movie will go as viral as Stopera's articles.

Images: Giphy, coolcat_callie/Twitter