Kanye West wants Danny McBride to play him in a movie about his life

Danny McBride has announced he's in talks with Kanye West to portray the controversial rapper in a movie about his life.

The Pineapple Express star announced the bizarre film project during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live this week, where he was promoting HBO's upcoming The Righteous Gemstones.

McBride recounted meeting Kanye on what he described as "the most incredible afternoon".

"One day I got a phone call out of nowhere and the voice sounded familiar, but I wasn't sure who it was. I was like, 'Hello?'... he was like, 'This is Kanye West,'" the comedian said.

"He basically said that he was a fan of mine and wanted to come hang out.

"He had an idea for a project that I think was a pretty brilliant idea… he wanted to do a movie about the story of his life and he wanted me to play him."

Kimmel was highly amused by the story and eventually requested to join in the project - he wants to play Kanye's reality TV star wife, Kim Kardashian.

Why McBride playing Kanye isn't as unlikely as it may seem
 

There's two reasons this film idea is probably not just a joke that McBride just made up - firstly, Kanye has proven himself open to letting comedians do what they want with his work.

In the mid-2000s, Kanye asked Zach Galifianakis to perform in and produce an alternate music video for his hit 'Can't Tell Me Nothing'. The comedian made the video on his farm and it mainly consists of him and indie folk musician Will Oldham mouthing Kanye's lyrics, while playing around with farm equipment.

Even though it appears to be a parody of his song, Kanye apparently loved what Galifianakis did, and posted the video on his official website kanyewest.com.

Secondly, McBride has experience in portraying some arguably very Kanye-like characters. Over the years, the rapper's outrageous claims have included claiming he is a god, asserting that the victims of slavery decided they wanted to be enslaved, publicly supporting Donald Trump and comparing himself to the likes of the Apostle Paul, Leonardo da Vinci, Socrates and Walt Disney.

Kanye could be considered a real-life version of one of McBride's most famous roles - the hilariously delusional, unbelievably arrogant Kenny Powers from TV show Eastbound & Down.

Warning: Embedded video below contains language that may offend.

After Kanye and McBride took a boat ride with each other and chatted about the movie, they went back to the actor's house and watched his seven-year-old son play Fortnite for a while.

The full Jimmy Kimmel Live clip can be seen below.

Newshub.