Ryan Phillippe And Val Kilmer To Star In MacGruber

Ryan Phillippe and Val Kilmer may be joining the MacGruber movie, starring Will Forte and Kristen Wiig. And thanks to THR, we know a little bit more about how the one-minute Saturday Night Live sketches, which were originally little more than a brief parody of MacGyver, will be transformed into a 90-minute feature directed by Jorma Taccone, who created the character and directed most of the SNL spots.

The first few sketches saw MacGruber and his two cohorts inevitably being destroyed as one of the crew refused to provide material needed to defuse a bomb, like dogshit and pubic hair. But they quickly changed to be about MacGruber's own problems, like alcoholism and age-related vanity. Still, not much of a plot for a feature. So the script, by Taccone, Forte and John Solomon, goes like this:

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.

Yeah, Cunth. Val Kilmer will play the villainous Cunth, while Phillippe would play Piper, an Army officer who has to team up with MacGruber. Wiig will be MacGruber's assistant. (She's played that role a few times in the sketches, though Maya Rudolph originally played the character.) Still, the punchline in each sketch is that MacGruber's flaws are all fatal flaws; they always end with an explosion that (presumably) kills everyone in the sketch...even when the 'story' continues a short time later along the same lines. Will the feature cut in some explosions every once in a while just to keep that pace? Does it matter?

Ironically, New Line still has a MacGyver feature in development, which will be made wholly irrelevant once this arrives.