Screenwriter Michael Bacall Gives Update on Les Grossman Movie; Says It’s “A Pretty Heartfelt Story” and it Was Written to Be Rated R

Screenwriter Michael Bacall is poised to be in high demand very, very soon. He co-wrote the wonderful Scott Pilgrim vs. The World with Edgar Wright, and he has two high-profile projects set to open weeks apart from each other: the much buzzed about 21 Jump Street and the Todd Phillips-produced Project X. In 2010 he was set to write a spinoff film for Tom Cruise’s Les Grossman character in Tropic Thunder, but we haven’t heard much about the project in quite some time.

Steve got the chance to sit down with Bacall to talk about 21 Jump Street and Project X, and while we’ll have the full interview up closer to the release of those films we wanted to share with you a few bits regarding the Les Grossman movie right away. Bacall confirmed that he wrote an R-rated script and revealed that it’s actually “a pretty heartfelt story.” Hit the jump for more.

Regarding the status of the film, Bacall said that it’s more to do with Cruise’s schedule than a development hold-up:

“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.”

The scribe confirmed that he intends for the pic to be R-rated and revealed that we’ll be delving a bit into who Les Grossman is:

“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.”

Though Grossman seemed to be an all-around terrible person in Tropic Thunder, it sounds as though we’ll be getting into why he’s such a despicable human being. I thought Cruise was surprisingly great as Grossman and I’m eager to see what kind of story Bacall, Cruise and Stiller have cooked up. I also sincerely hope that Bill Hader returns as Grossman’s right-hand man. The guy has insane comedic range and stole more than a few scenes in Tropic Thunder, so one imagines he’ll be back.

It may be a while before Cruise’s schedule opens up. He’s currently filming One Shot, he’s next set to star in Joseph Kosinski’s sci-fi pic Oblivion, and he recently committed to Doug Liman’s All You Need Is Kill. Hopefully he gets to Les Grossman sooner rather than later, as I’m excited to see how this project comes together.