Following last summer's announcement that the 2010 comedy MacGruber would be getting a television series on Peacock, the first new casting additions have been announced and they are pretty exciting. Sam Elliott, Laurence Fishburne, and Mickey Rourke will all have roles in the upcoming comedy series.
The trio of acclaimed actors will join Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, and Ryan Phillippe, who are all reprising their roles from the movie. The MacGruber series is set for an 8-episode run on Peacock and is expected to debut sometime in 2021.
Along with the casting news, Variety has details on who the new cast members will be playing, which further sheds light on the overall plot of the series. Rourke will be playing Brigadier Commander Enos Queeth, one of MacGruber's deadliest enemies who is someone he will need to face after being released from prison. Elliott will be playing Perry, MacGruber's father, with who he has lost contact and will need to help take down Queeth. Fishburne will play General Barrett Fasoose, a highly decorated military officer who also happens to be married to MacGruber's ex-wife, Vicky (Wiig).
MacGruber began as a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live which parodied the 1980s television series MacGyver. It featured Forte as the titular character, a hero who could apparently use everyday items to get himself out of dangerous situations but usually gets sidetracked and blown up. The 2010 movie took that ridiculous character to make an R-rated parody of the cheesy, "macho" action movies of the 1980s.
Given the fact that the movie was a box office bomb, it will be interesting to see what kind of interest there will be for the series when it comes out. The growing cult status of the movie no doubt helped convince the studio to continue the franchise. Certainly, this casting announcement makes the series immediately more interesting and the character descriptions sound perfect for these three actors. Given MacGruber's over-the-top macho attitude, Elliott feels like the obvious choice for his father. Fishburne always excels at playing authority figures and he should make a fun romantic rival for MacGruber.
Most exciting of all is Rourke as the villain since audiences have never gotten to see the actor enter a world that is as ridiculous as the one in MacGruber. If the new series hopes to match the tone and humor of the movie, fans are in for a hilariously strange and vulgar ride.
MacGruber will premiere exclusively on Peacock.
Source: Variety