The working relationship between Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie is quite a unique situation, as the filmmaker has become a longtime collaborator with the action star, lending his screenwriting and producing skills to various Cruise projects he won’t always direct (“Top Gun 3” being the recent example). One of those projects in development is an untitled spinoff comedy that would see Cruise reprise his “Tropic Thunder” character, Les Grossman.
During an in-depth conversation with Josh Horowitz on his podcast “Happy Sad Confused,” McQuarrie gave a brief update on the progress of the Les Grossman movie, which was listed among a group of projects he’s been developing with Cruise post-“Mission: Impossible.”
“The conversations we’ve had for Les Grossman are f***ing funny…we’re talking about it, man. We’re having serious conversations about it and how best to do it,” McQuarrie said of the project when pressed about how serious they are about making it.
A pardoy of various studio executives the performance is a wild one as we don’t often see Cruise getting to flex his comedic chops and in the film was paired-up with comedian Bill Hader, who spent his early days in Hollywood as a production assistant on various projects such as “Spider-Man” and the mostly forgotten Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick “Collateral Damage.”
When asked if Cruise’s Les Grossman would be the lead in the untitled film or a supporting player again, McQuarrie said, “You hit the nail right on the head that I was going to. A leading man has different responsibilities.” The filmmaker goes on to cite Paul Thomas Anderson‘s “Magnolia,” which allowed Cruise to be a little more outrageous, because he was just one character of many we follow in that film, and not just the lead protagonist, giving him more room to play with the wacky improvisational comedy of the character.
Also, adding that supporting actors can have a lot more leeway with what they can and cannot do in a picture compared to what is expected of a traditional lead.
That’s some interesting insight there, as we originally assumed the Les Grossman would simply be centered around him. But, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if we instead followed Hader’s character, Studio Executive Rob Slolom (Grossman’s assistant and right-hand man), or Matthew McConaughey‘s talent agent, The Pecker, as our entry point for this satirical world of moviemaking.
McQuarrie isn’t exactly a comedy writer, although we shouldn’t say it’s impossible that he could tackle a script on his own. Then again, given his history of co-writing, you would imagine he could recruit seasoned comedy writers like original writer/director Ben Stiller (although, he seems awfly busy with “Severance“) or even Hader (wrote at both “SNL” and “South Park“), who has developed a flourishing new career as director after his acclaimed HBO hit-man series “Barry,” to help flesh-out ideas or polish future drafts.
I guess we’ll have to pray to the movie gods that Cruise doesn’t throw this one in the pile of exciting-sounding Hollywood projects that never see the light of day.
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