Jorma Taccone & John Solomon Interview MacGruber

Jorma Taccone & John Solomon Interview: MacGruber

MacGruber co-creators Jorma Taccone and John Solomon discuss bringing the character back after a decade, Peacock’s confidence in the show and more.

You Are Reading :[thien_display_title]

After a decade of rotting in prison, MacGruber is back and ready for action. The United States government once again turns to Will Forte’s crafty hero in an effort to save the world from a villain from his past, Brigadier Commander Enos Queeth (Billy Zane), who is planning to launch a biological weapon of epic proportions.

In time for the show’s premiere, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with creators Jorma Taccone and John Solomon to discuss MacGruber, the long development cycle of a follow-up to the movie, and Peacock’s confidence in the project.

Screen Rant: I’m glad to finally be able to talk about MacGruber again. You guys have been kicking around the possible return ever since the movie came out, how did the stars align for it to happen now?

Jorma Taccone: What we’ve been saying, and is just true, is that Lorne Michaels just makes s**t happen. [Chuckles] He willed the movie into existence, I think we executed it to the best of our ability and then this series is the same thing. We did have interviews over the last like 10 years where we would just sort of say, “Yeah, the sequel’s happening.” I think that’s how it ended up on IMDb as a possible thing, but none of that was true. We had always wanted to make a sequel, when I was waiting around because these guys were on Last Man on Earth for so long, I did write basically a spec for John and Will to read of an idea of a sequel.

See also  Married With Children 10 Things About Al That Would Never Fly Today

Then the first act of a retooled version, once these guys gave me notes on stuff, kind of became the first episode after we obviously retooled it again and again. But we had always known that we’d wanted to make more of a movie than a TV show and that’s kind of what this feels like. It’s like a long movie broken up into eight parts with a lot of cliffhangers, but it gave us more opportunities in a way to have it be a series that we could just sort of flesh out all this emotional stuff and all the stuff that keeps you engaged in the dumb, dumb comedy. [Chuckles]

John, anything to add to that?

John Solomon: That’s a great one. That is perfect.

Jorma, since you do talk about your guys’ efforts to make this feel like a movie, the look of this series, I feel like is unlike anything that we’ve seen before in television, where it does look just like the movie. Since you have such a big hand in the director’s chair again, what was it like finding the right look for the show?

Jorma Taccone: It’s a decision that all of us are involved in, it’s sort of almost like a four-headed monster honestly. Our buddy Dave Noel, who’s a producer on this, is also very instrumental in the tone of this thing, but I think we always knew that we wanted to enhance the look of the series. So when me and John were looking for a DP that could bring that, we interviewed a couple of people and there were some amazing candidates, but our buddy Brandon [Trost], who shot the movie and has since gone on to major things working with Seth [Rogen] and [Dear Evan Hansen] now and shot two films from my wife, Marielle Heller, who’s a much more talented director than I.

See also  Doctor Doom Becomes Marvels Infamous Iron Man

We couldn’t get him, because he was doing Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and he suggested this guy Jesse Feldman and was like, “This guy is me.” [Laughs] The amount of s**t that Peacock said yes to without questioning us is so shocking. But we were all very much of the same mind of like let’s get this very dramatic [look]. I think that, weirdly, the look of the series is sort of enhanced from even what the movie was, it’s exactly what we wanted. So whether it’s successful or not remains to be seen, but we’re, we’re very proud of it.

This show does end on a pretty nice note, but still has room for more. Have you guys started kicking around ideas for potentially more if Peacock’s interested?

John Solomon: Oh yeah, we’ve already been greenlit for how many seasons, Jorma?

Jorma Taccone: They’re saying four, but it might be five.

John Solomon: So maybe five seasons.

Jorma Taccone: They’ve also promised that each season there will be an additional $10 million just to play with basically, because they love the action stuff, but they also want to get an even bigger and better cast, which I don’t know if it’s even possible. But we’re also gonna do a whole international thing, we’re gonna shoot part of season 2 in China.

John Solomon: They’re so confident, they’re just confident.

Jorma Taccone: Yeah, they’re confident and they hate money. [Laughs]

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/macgruber-peacock-jorma-taccone-john-solomon-interview/

Movies -