Wayne’s World went from being a Saturday Night Live sketch to a movie, as did Coneheads, although that wasn’t quite as successful. And now it looks as though MacGruber, a recurring SNL sketch which unsurprisingly spoofs MacGyver, is also heading for the big screen.
The MacGruber sketches see Will Forte playing MacGyver’s son who, along with his assistant played by Kristen Wiig and the guest star of the week, always find themselves in a locked room with a ticking bomb about to explode. Rather than disarm the bomb, MacGruber invariably gets sidetracked by his own personal issues and ends up getting blown to bits.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jorma Taccone and Lorne Michaels will now be bringing the character to the big screen. Forte and Wiig will reprise their roles, while Ryan Phillipe and Val Kilmer are also being lined up to appear. The movie is being fast tracked and could appear before the MacGyver movie currently being prepped at New Line.
Turning a quick and simple sketch into a full-length feature is a hard job, and is rarely successfully pulled off. The script is already written, with Michaels, Taccone, and Forte contributing to it. The MacGruber movie will see MacGruber pulled out of retirement as a monk to serve his country one last time.
This could either be brilliant or rubbish and it’s too early to tell which it’s likely to be at the moment. The skits are very funny but can the one-dimensional characters be fleshed out enough to make a movie worth seeing? Wayne and Garth managed, so maybe MacGruber can too.
