MacGruber lives! Hopefully. A sequel to the brilliant, hilarious, and insane 2010 comedy has been talked about for a long time now, but getting it off the ground has proven difficult because, well, MacGruber was a box office bomb, grossing under $10 million at the box office. Written by Will Forte, John Solomon, and Jorma Taccone with Taccone at the helm, the film was a feature-length adaptation of a recurring SNL sketch in which Forte played a MacGuyver-like action hero with tremendous confidence and absolutely zero skill. The movie is a delightful (not to mention tremendously rewatchable) throwback to the ridiculous action movies of the 80s and 90s, with Forte delivering an unhinged comedic performance that I’d venture to say is downright iconic.
Forte and Taccone have long expressed their desire to make MacGruber 2 and have been working on and off on a screenplay, but Taccone just dropped the bomb the the sequel idea has been jettisoned in favor of something else: a MacGruber TV series. Taccone broke the news speaking with The Daily Beast, revealing they’ve been pitching the idea over the past few days:
“We just spent the last two days pitching it as a series,” reveals Taccone. “Eight-to-ten episodes. I’m really hoping that when you print this there’s an announcement that it’s actually happening, because I know nothing right now. This is the first time I’ve mentioned it, so this may be a tragic interview.”
Taccone says the entire original cast—including Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillipe, and even Val Kilmer—is down to return, owing to their love for the movie:
“It’s everyone. Val was blown up pretty badly, he’ll have half a head. Everyone is so down,” says Taccone. “What’s nice is that, when you make something that had the heartbreak of not doing so well financially… I would feel terrible if the people involved were embarrassed about it, but Ryan loves that shit, Kristen loves that shit, all the people involved are so psyched.”
A MacGruber TV series makes a lot of sense, especially if it could land somewhere like Netflix or Amazon. The television medium is no longer foreign territory to major movie stars, and eight-to-ten episodes sounds like the perfect length for the continued insanity of the MacGruber franchise.
Taccone and Forte have been working together on the follow-up, and with Forte’s schedule now clear owing to the cancellation of his Fox series The Last Man on Earth (RIP), he’s no doubt ready to move full-speed ahead with MacGruber. Surely someone in Hollywood has to be willing to greenlight this, right?
