Ben Stiller and Tom Cruise have signed on to play The Hardy Men, a action comedy based on the classic mystery book series The Hardy Boys.

The movie re-teams Stiller with Night at the Museum director Shawn Levy. We’ve been very vocal in the past regarding Levy’s sub-par work. So it worries us that he has become Hollywood’s new Cinderella director (Levy was also given The Flash after David Goyer dropped out). But somehow excited about this project, despite Levy’s involvement (may-be he won’t screw it up, although it’s doubtful).

Variety describes the plot:

The Hardy boys, once wunderkind youth sleuths, have grown up. Long estranged, they’re brought together to solve one last case.

20th Century Fox hopes to put the film into production by 2008.

Stiller and Cruise hope to re-team for Tropic Thunder, a comedy Stiller will direct for the Paramount owned Dreamworks. I’m not sure how well that will go over considering that Paramount’s public dump of Cruise last year.

Cruise first met Stiller after seeing his Cruise impersonation on The Ben Stiller Show. The two starred together in a 2000 short film titled Mission: Improbable, in which Stiller portrayed a stuntman for Cruise on Mission: Impossible 2. You can see that short film below.

The original Hardy Boys book series was produced between 1927 and 1979 under the pen name Franklin W. Dixon. Although various ghostwriters were employed, under contract of secrecy, to pen the actual stories. In the book series, the brother amateur detectives solved mysteries in the fictional city of Bayport (on Barmet Bay) with their famous father, Fenton Hardy, a private detective formerly with the New York Police Department (something Veronica Mars later stole payed homage to).

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