THR is reporting that the destined to suck movie adaptation of Saturday Night Live’s “MacGruber” is going to take down more than just record low numbers at the box office. They’ll also be taking down the careers of two solid actors.
Ryan Phillippe is in negotiations to star in the feature, with Val Kilmer in negotiations to also join the Relativity Media production. Will Forte and Kristen Wiig are reprising their roles from the skits.
The “MacGruber” sketches starred Forte as MacGyver’s son with Wiig as an assistant who always find themselves, along with that week’s guest star, in a control room with a ticking bomb about to go off. MacGruber gets sidelined by personal issues, and the bomb goes off. Forte and Taccone wrote the parodies with John Solomon. The trio wrote the feature script, which takes the story in a completely different direction from the skits yet remains strangely familiar: The legendary, much decorated MacGruber is pulled out of retirement as a monk in Ecuador by a colonel, who needs him once more to fight on behalf of his country. This time the mission involves going up against the evil Cunth, who has a nuclear warhead; the mission is personal because Cunth killed MacGruber’s bride.
The movie version would see Phillippe playing Piper, an Army officer forced to pair up with a reluctant MacGruber. Kilmer would be Cunth.
The sad thing is… as fast as this thing is heading towards theaters… it will hit the big screen before the “MacGyver” movie.