Tropic Thunder's Les Grossman, as played by Tom Cruise, is still on course for a spin-off movie of his own...
We can’t be the only ones who assumed that the plans for a Les Grossman spin-off movie had been quietly dropped. Grossman was, of course, the character that Tom Cruise played under layers of disguise in Tropic Thunder. And even though we thought it was Robert Downey Jr that stole most of that film, rather than Cruise, it was the Grossman character that grabbed most of the attention.
Around the time, then, plans were confirmed to do a spin-off movie entirely devoted to Grossman, which Cruise expressed an interest in. Since then, the success of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol has reignited his star power somewhat, and he’s already shot Rock Of Ages and Jack Reacher movie One Shot.
With We Mortals Are, for director Doug Liman, already lined up too, the challenge appears to be finding a gap in Cruise’s schedule to make the Grossman movie.
Yet work is pressing ahead on the script. Collider nattered to Michael Bacall, the screenwriter on the project, and revealed that “Paramount has the draft and I gather that they’re pretty happy with it”, before confirming that “I think Tom Cruise probably has a lot of stuff on his plate right now”.
But if the schedule problems can be overcome, there may be room for optimism here.
Bacall told Collider that “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”.
We wouldn’t expect to see the film in cinemas before 2014 the rate things are going. But before then, Bacall has two films he’s contributed to the script to appearing in cinemas in the next month: Project X and 21 Jump Street. At least one of those is going to be very, very worth seeing.
Here’s the interview at Collider.
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