Vincent. Anthony. Vaughn. He’s in the game.
The Wedding Crashers star’s latest gig is an especially fun and serendipitous role: Vaughn is the “voice and hero” of the Madden NFL 27 ad campaign. And the guy who once “went from the third team to the prep team” as Jamie O’Hare in Rudy (1993) perfectly quarterbacks the commercial.
Madden, EA Sports‘ signature video game, filmed this year’s ad at Halas Hall in Lake Forest, Ill., where Vaughn grew up and the Chicago Bears practice. (The NFC North team plays their home games 40 miles south at Soldier Field in Chicago.)
Vaughn is not only a big Bears fan, he’s a big Madden fan as well. To align the two, Vaughn was only needed for a day — albeit “a big, long, full shoot day,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter.
The result, a four-minute reveal trailer that will be posted in full on YouTube and dissected into 15- and 30-second increments for more traditional TV and streaming ads, is one of the best video game commercials since “Genesis Does What Nintendon’t” (1990), Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. television spot (1999), or the entire movie The Wizard (1989) starring Fred Savage. For the “It’s Your League” spot, its pitchman is in pitch-perfect Vaughn mode, and Caleb Williams, the Bears QB and Madden NFL 27 cover athlete, is one hell of a backup.
