“Oh yeah! Playa… playa!”
As early as December of 2008, shortly after receiving a Golden Globe nomination for his turn as studio chief Les Grossman in “Tropic Thunder,” Tom Cruise revealed that he and the film’s writer/director/star Ben Stiller were kicking around ideas to do another project with the Grossman character.
“Ben and I are always talking about what we can do with Les,” Cruise said at the time. “Do we do some viral video with Les?”
We haven’t heard any movement on this possibility, so when MTV had a chance to speak with Stiller while he was promoting his upcoming indie, “Greenberg,” they put the question to him. Any movement with the Grossman project?
“We’re playing around with ideas for a Les Grossman something,” Stiller said. “Maybe a movie, maybe some Internet stuff. I love that character and Tom, I think, is just insanely funny doing that guy. And I think he’s game for it too.”
Tom Cruise’s Grossman character is definitely one of my favorite parts of “Tropic Thunder” and would love to see a spin-off that takes place in the Hollywood world which would bring us more of Grossman’s antics.
Is this just idle talk from Stiller, or have their ideas for Grossman morphed from a few Internet shorts to an actual theatrical spin-off? I’ll remain optimistic and simply be content knowing that Stiller and Cruise are still keeping alive the idea of resurrecting the classically arrogant and foul-mouthed Grossman character a year and a half after “Tropic Thunder” opened.