‘Workaholics’ stars bring the same humor to ‘Game Over, Man!’

After seven seasons of the Comedy Central sitcom Workaholics, actors Blake Anderson, Adam Devine and Anders Holm are finally leaving the office. The trio’s action-comedy, Game Over, Man! debuts on Netflix on March 23, almost exactly a year after the Workaholics finale.

In only a slight departure from their Workaholics characters, the three performers play a group of bored waitstaff on the verge of getting their video game concept funded, when a terrorist group storms their glitzy hotel and takes their benefactor and all of his guests hostage. Desperate to get their game funded, the bumbling, tuxedoed waiters have no choice but to fight their way through the hotel and save the day. The film maintains Workaholics’ signature voice — irreverence and cultural criticism mixed with joyously juvenile humor — all of which is taken to another level without the oversight of a TV network.

“It was refreshing to have all those freedom that a movie allows you to have,” Anderson said. “Especially at Netflix … they allow you to be as creative as you want to be. They also don’t have ‘R’ ratings, so anything goes.”

The action elements of the film, which include numerous fight scenes and high-budget stunts, were a new and exciting challenge for the team. A key scene features the waiters hanging between two buildings on an ironing board-and-zip-tie contraption, Home Alone 2-style.

“We wanted to make the movie feel much larger than anything you’ve seen from us,” Devine said.

“We’d never gotten to do a stunt of that scale, and it was pretty surreal to be on that big green screen stage, so that was a cool moment,” Anderson said. “It almost felt like we were Marvel heroes for a second.”

Intricate fight scenes also allowed the creators to invite their friends for small roles; performers like Saturday Night Live alumnus Fred Armisen, Veep star Sam Richardson and musicians Action Bronson and Flying Lotus make appearances.

“Our friends are the only people we know, the only people who will respond to our phone calls and texts,” Devine said. “A lot of people we were calling out just for one day of work where you come in and basically just get killed, so you kind of have to pull the homies back for some of that.”

Game Over, Man! is the result of more than six years of steady collaboration among the comedic leads, director Kyle Newacheck and producers Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Scott Rudin.

“The story was something we were all throwing around, and I fancy myself as the writer of the crew, so I’m the one who goes off and kind of throws it all together,” Holm said, who has the head writing credit. “This is the group’s movie, and it’s a labor of love to write for these goddamn comedy geniuses.”

Through six years of refining, the movie script naturally underwent changes, but many key plot elements remained the same.

“The things that have been there since the jump are that it takes place in a hotel, Shaggy, the asphyxiation, the full-frontal male nudity … and everything else was added later on,” Holm said.

Devine was also careful to point out the addition of more recent cultural references, such as a pointed critique of vaping. “We’re bad boy maniacs, man. We come with all that hot sauce the kids like,” he said.

Still, Devine says that the logistics of creating a feature film were very different from those of a half-hour television series.

“We got to this movie at kind of the perfect place in our lives and careers, to where we could do it and not have it feel like too much,” Devine said. “It is a lot to be given millions and millions of dollars to go off and make a movie, but since we were able to do Workaholics for so long, we got pretty comfortable steering the ship.”

For the ideal viewing experience, Devine recommends getting as close to the full cinematic experience as possible.

“Watch it with friends on the biggest TV you can find, because it is a cool, big movie, and it’s kind of a shame to watch it on your phone,” he said. “This is a movie that I think will play better on a larger screen.”

Netflix originally planned to premiere Game Over, Man! on April 20, but announced in January that the release date would be moved up to March 23.

“We’ve been sitting on the movie for a while and they were like, ‘Let’s just put it out,’ and also we like to think it’s a 4/20 gift for all the people that are celebrating 4/20 every day of their life,” Devine said. “We’ve been done with it for a while now, and are actually really excited for it to come out for everyone to see.”