Caffeinated Clint
You might remember a year or so back getting wind of some blabbering concerning a “Tropic Thunder” spin-off that would concentrate on Tom Cruise’s hilariously realistic studio chief character, Les Grossman.
I personally didn’t think it’d still be on the cards for Cruise, if only because he’s back on top with the likes of “Mission : Impossible – Ghost Protocol” so can afford to shy away from the more riskier, self-deprecating roles until his share-price drops again. But also, he’s got so much on his plate. But boy am I happy to hear the project isn’t off.
The film’s screenwriter Michael Bacall (“21 Jump Street”) tells Collider that the Grossman project is still in the cards; he also revealed some details about it saying it’ll definitely come donning a very adult classification.
The hold-up is, not surprisingly, Cruise’s choca-bloc schedule.
“Paramount has the draft and I gather that they’re pretty happy with it. I think Tom Cruise probably has a lot of stuff on his plate right now (laughs) and I think it’ll be a schedule thing more than anything.”
Bacall says he’s fleshed out the character of Grossman and audiences will get a better insight into him than they did in the Ben Stiller pic.
“I wrote it for R because we had precedent with Tropic Thunder. It’s actually a pretty heartfelt story. I had a lot of meetings with Mr. Cruise and Mr. Stiller and it was crazy, it was a blast. I think we came up with some really fun stuff to give you an insight into who the guy is, so I’m hopeful that that’ll get up and running soon.”
I’m really excited to see what Bacall has written for Grossman, I loved his “21 Jump Street”, it’s truly one of the funnest films I’ve seen in a couple of years, particularly of that type, so here’s hoping the Cruise number delivers just as much bang for our buck.
Considering Cruise has about half-a-dozen films on his to-do list – including “One Shot”, “Oblivion”, “All You Need is Kill” and potential new “Top Gun” and “Mission : Impossible” sequels – it’ll likely be a couple of years before we see Grossman’s chubby ass shakin’ it again.
Meantime…
