low tom cruise tropic thunder

One of the highlights of the 2008 Ben Stiller comedy “Tropic Thunder” is Les Grossman, the venom-spewing, Diet Coke-drinking studio head who doesn’t care that the lead actor (Stiller) in his multimillion-dollar movie has been kidnapped in the jungles of Vietnam.

The reason why the character is so memorable is simple: He's played by Tom Cruise.

Well, it was probably the best time for Cruise to do something that’s not in his wheelhouse. Back then, Cruise was still getting over the box-office disaster of “Mission: Impossible 3,” and his public statements about Scientology caused Viacom chair Sumner Redstone to tell a reporter , “We don’t think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot.”

Thankfully, Cruise's friend Ben Stiller wanted him to be in “Thunder.” And as the movie’s coscreenwriter Justin Theroux tells it, they wanted Cruise to have a larger part.

“We were talking to Tom about maybe doing Ben’s part — we wanted him in the movie,” Theroux told Business Insider while doing press for “Zoolander 2,” which he also cowrote. “We thought it would be a real coup to get him in the movie.”

But Cruise pushed for the minor studio-head role, so Theroux went to work on the character.

(Jeff Spicer/Getty) Justin Theroux.

“I went back and started working on it and sketching it out and basically creating the most vile character I could create,” Theroux revealed. “And there was a moment of going, ‘Oh, s--t, eventually Tom is going to see these pages and he’s going to be like, 'What the hell are you doing?’”

But that was far from the case. In fact, Cruise encouraged Theroux and Stiller to make the character even more offensive.

And when it came to the Les Grossman look — balding and overweight — Cruise suggested another memorable feature.

“He wanted these prosthetic hands — big, chubby hands,” Theroux said of Cruise's pointer.

In many ways. the Les Grossman character made Cruise hip again to an audience that was starting to write him off.

Since the release of “Tropic Thunder,” many have pushed for a spinoff that focuses on Grossman.

Theroux, for one, is game, and it seems like it might be tentatively in the works.

“We’ve talked about it,” Theroux said. “But it’s one of those things where we go, we don’t want to jam anything, we just want to make sure the tone is right and it would be the right story.”

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The Truth About Tom Cruise's Character In 'Tropic Thunder'

Tom was supposed to play the leading role that Ben Stiller ended up taking.

Love him or loathe him, there's no denying that Tom Cruise basically stole Tropic Thunder. While the movie was filled with controversy, such as Robert Downey Jr.'s character's acting choices , the 2008 film remains beloved. In the film, Tom Cruise played a vile Hollywood mogul named Les Grossman. Given Tom's incredible filmography , it makes sense that he brought this character to life so well. But given Tom's recent set outburst as well as his not-so-clean reputation among some in Hollywood perhaps his casting was even more calculated. Either way, Tom Cruise absolutely knocked this role out of the park. Thanks to a fantastic article by Grantland , we now know how he was able to do this...

Tom Was Supposed To Play Ben's Role Until He Gave A Very Specific Script Note

Tom Cruise needed to repair his image in 2007. Years of conflict with marriages, jumping on couches, and squabbles with the studio making his Mission Impossible movies put him in a bad light. Ultimately, Tropic Thunder was the film that helped (momentarily) rehabilitate his image. But Tom wasn't supposed to play Les Grossman, the vicious studio executive who clearly believed actors were disposable. Actually, Tom was supposed to play the leading role that Ben Stiller ended up taking. It made sense that Ben wasn't initially interested in the lead role. After all, he was already directing it and writing it with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen.

"Justin Theroux and I had been working on the script on and off for eight years," Ben Stiller said to Grantland. "We had an outline and about half a script. I knew how it should end. Then we brought Etan on and got a full draft."

When Etan Cohen came on in 2002, he basically came up with the idea that would lead Tom Cruise to essentially create Les Grossman.

Related: Amidst The Tom Cruise Controversy, Katie Holmes Seems Unbothered And Is Focusing On Christmas

"We were still figuring out why the actors would get abandoned and no one would notice that all these stars were gone," Etan Cohen said. "So I had written this throwaway thing at the side of the document that said: 'Maybe the studio has an insurance policy on production. When the director dies they recoup all their expenses, so the studio doesn’t care about the actors.' Then we totally went away from that for years."

By that time, Tom Cruise had already read the script and claimed that there was a need for another villain. In fact, he even stated that it could use a greedy studio exec who 'represents the gross part of Hollywood'.

"His idea to show the studio head actually fixed a problem we had for a long time. We never cut back to the real world for any of the previous drafts. All the Grossman scenes totally fixed the plot holes" Ben Stiller claimed.

Related: Tom Cruise Trolled For 'Social Distancing From His Daughter' After Fiery Audio Leaks

Soon after, a new draft was written and Ben gave the role of the studio exec to Tom, who couldn't take it due to scheduling conflicts. But there was no name for the character at first. In fact, it took an entire year for 'Les Grossman' to officially be created.

"Ben decided he was going to play Speedman, and then he got a phone call from Tom, who said he just couldn’t get the script out of his mind. Tom asked, 'What else is open?' And Ben said, 'Well, we haven’t cast the Les Grossman role yet.' Tom was like, 'I’d play that,'" producer Stuart Cornfeld said.

Les Grossman's Look Was Half The Performance

While Tom brought a certain amount of energy to the role, his hair, make-up, and prosthetics were really what made the performance memorable. After all, Tom was barely recognizable.

"I was Tom’s go-to makeup person from Interview With the Vampire on. I did a lot of big, iconic looks for him," makeup designer Michèle Burke said. "I got a text saying, 'Tom wants to have hairy arms.' And I was thinking, Oh, OK, we can get hairy arms. Then they were like, 'We want him to have a hairy chest.' Then suddenly it was like he’s going to have big hands, and I’m sitting there thinking, This is getting bigger than I expected. Then they started sending me pictures of other people who looked a bit like this. You know, with the gold jewelry, the hairy chest. I thought, OK, now I’m beginning to get the picture, this is full-on."

Then, of course, there was the fat suit which was a bunch of custom pads made out of foam and beading from the inside of a pillow. This beading accurately mimicked the jiggle that human fat makes when it moves; something that was vital for the dance number...

All About Tom Cruise Dancing

"We’re doing the makeup test and it’s the first time Tom’s in the Les Grossman outfit. He stops and says, 'Maybe I should dance in this. You know, I haven’t danced in a movie in a long time,'" producer Stuart Cornfeld said.

The Mission Impossible and Eye Wide Shut star ended up choreographing all of his own dance moves which just made everyone on the set burst out laughing.

"I remember him standing off in a corner just working on his moves," co-star Bill Hader explained.

The outrageous costume, hair, and make-up, the hilarious lines (mostly written by Justin Theroux), as well as the performance and energy that Tom Cruise brought to the role, ended up creating a truly memorable character.

Next: Why Did Tom Cruise Agree To A Cameo In 'Austin Powers'?

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Tom Cruise and ‘Tropic Thunder’ 10 Years Later

Ten years ago today, tom cruise began to win back the public with 'tropic thunder,' a movie he nor hollywood would touch with a 10-foot pole these days..

There are few things as intangible and fluid as celebrity, a concept the fickle public agrees on until it doesn’t. That the film industry is built upon and upheld by the idea of celebrity is a doozy. In-demand stars use their popularity to push their careers forward, establishing mainstream appeal and acceptance and a track record of bankability, and then they are suddenly elevated to Movie Star status. It’s a tenuous position that is carefully earned but can so easily be lost.

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Which brings us to Tom Cruise and Tropic Thunder .

The Ben Stiller –directed comedy, which was released 10 years ago today, was a $92 million movie bankrolled by Paramount (PARA) / DreamWorks . While the film didn’t exactly redefine the genre like Animal House or speak to a generation like Superbad , it did serve a very important purpose: it cemented Cruise’s comeback.

After a disastrous streak of bad PR in the mid-2000s, a rebound for the actor seemed like an impossible mission indeed, yet this small supporting role helped redeem him. When the film hit theaters, Cruise’s character, Les Grossman, emerged as a scene-stealing, vulgar burst of rage; his behavior might have echoed Cruise’s own internal fury directed at a Hollywood system that had raised him up and then torn him down. The performance had former naysayers back on his side. However, a decade later, the part carries with it a whiff of irony— Tropic Thunder was both a lifeline for Cruise and his brand and a project that he would never touch today.

It’s fascinating that Cruise was back in good graces after  Tropic Thunder , an occasionally hilarious movie that veers, if not leaps, into offensive territory. In a spoof of method actors like Russell Crowe , Robert Downey Jr . plays an overly serious and committed Australian Oscar winner who undergoes a controversial procedure in order to play an African-American sergeant in the film’s war movie within a movie. It was basically a roundabout way of putting blackface in a major studio comedy. It’s problematic on multiple levels, yet Downey Jr. still earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination at that year’s Academy Awards. (Then again, the Academy could never be accused of being “in touch.”)

Tropic Thunder is also misguided in its depiction of Southeast Asia and the mentally challenged, painting the former as a corrupt drug den of stereotypes and showing Stiller tackle the latter for cheap laughs. Watch it now, and the film is really just a mixed bag of crude humor hurled at those who’ve been historically mocked. Yes, it’s funny at times, but it lacks any empathy for its targets; it’s surprising we weren’t more turned off at the time.

Taking a risk like this today would threaten Cruise’s marketability. There’s a reason the actor has largely stepped away from the serious dramas and Oscar bait that helped define his career in the ’80s and ’90s. Over the past decade he’s leaned almost entirely on action blockbusters, the type of innocuous output that keeps him squarely in the multiplex. There’s nothing wrong with that— Mission: Impossible-Fallout   is spectacular—but his choices are the Hollywood equivalent of coloring inside the lines.

So how and why did he choose to appear in something so out-there and potentially hazardous in 2008? Because around the time of Tropic Thunder , Cruise’s stock was trading lower than MoviePass’ is today.  There was his infamous couch jumping on Oprah in 2005, an early YouTube phenomenon and ancestor of the viral meme. As  The Ringer ‘s Kate Knibbs noted, “People hated it. More importantly, they loved to hate it. Most importantly, they loved to talk about hating it.” It was followed by a public feud with Brooke Shields in which he seemed to dismiss the notion of postpartum depression. Later, Cruise made some regrettable comments about the field of psychiatry. And on top of all this, he was becoming increasingly vocal about his controversial Scientology beliefs.

Suddenly, the world’s biggest, most likable movie star was a punchline. So what better way to escape the laughter than to amplify it on his own terms?

Cruise’s Les Grossman was largely absent from Tropic Thunder’ s promotional materials. Instead, he popped up in the movie in a sort of double-take-inducing cameo. With his balding head, forest-thick chest hair and fat suit, he was nearly unrecognizable. It was the perfect disguise, one that hinted at some meta truths. As Les, he was no longer running from the sneers and the snickers—he was poking fun at himself, and offering a cathartic release for the masses.  Look! T om Cruise is in on the joke. How bad could he be?  Just like that, the narrative began to shift back in his favor. Writer Sara Vilkomerson wrote at the time that Cruise gave “an astonishingly funny and surprising supporting performance.” Cruise’s reputation had been burnished; he was viewed as a lovable eccentric goofball.

However,  Tropic Thunder wouldn’t pass muster today. Major studio comedies are struggling at the box office. Releases with beloved names like Ferrell and Fey attached to them can’t seem to gain much traction. With the rise of major superhero franchises, the mid-budget movie is being  squeezed out of existence . If studios are afraid to touch them, a $92 million offbeat, irreverent comedy like  Tropic Thunder would never get made today. The project would be the type of box-office high-wire act that doesn’t fit with a studio’s financial forecasts. Audiences have mostly tuned out big-screen comedies to indulge in the countless streaming TV comedies on offer. More important, its polarizing material wouldn’t fly in these racially charged times. But a decade ago, it was the exact kind of bizarre, only-in-Hollywood path to redemption Cruise needed to land back on top. Lucky for him, the thunder came when it did.

• SEE ALSO : Hank Azaria On What It Takes to Change

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Tropic Thunder  rewatched and reconsidered, 10 years later

Darren is a TV Critic. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFranich for opinions and recommendations.

Leah Greenblatt is the critic at large at Entertainment Weekly , covering movies, music, books, and theater. She is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and has been writing for EW since 2004.

The summer of 2008 broke history, and rebuilt it. America suffered through a bitter presidential election on the road to a globewrecking financial crisis. In theaters, cinematic generations were rising — and falling. Superheroes, Will Smith, George Lucas, Guillermo del Toro, Emma Stone, Mike Myers, Sisterhood s and Step Brothers , Batman, and ABBA, adaptations of TV shows we still tweet about, new installments of movie franchises studios won't stop rebooting: everything Hollywood was before, alongside everything it still is.

In our weekly column Two Thousand Late , we'll explore the big hits and curious flops from a summer that has never really ended. Next week: Summer ends and a new era dawns with The House Bunny . This week: critic at large Leah Greenblatt and TV critic Darren Franich on Tropic Thunder .

DARREN: We've revisited a lot of movies this summer, Leah. But I have to admit, nothing made me more anxious than the prospect of rewatching Tropic Thunder.

For director-star Ben Stiller, this was magnum opus territory: A big-budget comedy about big-budget excess, stuffed with hard-R ultraviolence and offensive-on-purpose material. Stiller was an influential cult-comedy voice in the '90s before he became a full-blown franchise-launching megastar across the 2000s. On Thunder , he assembled an all-star lineup from across the cinematic universe of humor: fellow comedy star Jack Black, Apatow-adjacent Jay Baruchel and Danny McBride, stand-up Brandon T. Jackson, eternal "he's much more popular in Britain" talking point Steve Coogan. And that's not to mention Tom Cruise under heavy makeup, Robert Downey Jr. under heavy makeup, and Matthew McConaughey in the wilderness years.

Tropic Thunder was a phenomenon upon initial release. It was the movie that finally pushed The Dark Knight off the top of the box office, maintaining a No. 1 position in domestic theaters through Labor Day. And thanks to Downey, it became the rare comedy hit to receive Oscar attention, earning the star a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Downey's role-within-a-role might be the big talking point here. As a vaguely Crowevian method actor Kirk Lazarus, Downey spends most of the movie exhibiting "pigmentation alteration" — meta-blackface, basically.

It seems impossible that any actor would play a role like that today, though on some level "wouldn't happen today" is the vibe of the whole movie. Tropic Thunder opens with a comedy assault, fake trailers, fart symphonies, a Brokeback ish Oscar parody, the sight of Stiller's hands exploded into Sarlacc-y stumps. The opening scene openly quotes Platoon and Apocalypse Now , two films which symbolize an earlier era of auteurist overreach.

You're primed for a scathing satire of Hollywood…and then the film never really lives up to that prologue. There are some isolated bits in Tropic Thunder I really enjoy. I forgot just how fully committed and semi-psychopathic Jack Black was in the part of a druggy tabloid star. On some deeply pathological level, I will always think it's hilarious when Tom Cruise says bad words. But there's something a little backpatty in the film's tone, halfway to Entourage. You feel everyone's very proud of everything they're getting away with — and the fact that Stiller ends Tropic Thunder with his character's Oscar victory feels like meta-narcissism falling backwards into light egomania.

What was your experience watching Tropic Thunder this go-round, Leah?

LEAH: Mine was the same honestly, though maybe I enjoyed it just a smedge more than you did? Or the first 45 minutes at least; much like Ben Stiller's biceps, the last hour is the kind of swole that you makes you think, "That is a whole lot of effort, for my mere mild amusement." Especially when you remember that this is the same director who made his debut less than 15 years earlier with Reality Bites , where his character purposefully represented all the smash-cut emptiness of modern pop culture that Winona and her scrappy little band of gas-station bohemians were trying to get away from. The student has become the blaster.

But there are so many moments in Thunder that I still love, too: the loony cameos (don't tell me that Tobey Maguire's performance as the homoerotic priest in the Kirk Lazarus trailer-within-a-trailer doesn't deserve at least a Cable Ace award), Jack Black and his jellybeans; Danny McBride's reverse lightning-bolt mullet; RDJ's "never go full retard" speech. And you're so right, even rewatching that speech scene alone on my laptop, I felt uncomfortable; I don't feel great even typing the words now. But there is real Academy wisdom in that speech too — and his delivery is perfect.

I actually enjoy this Downey performance way more than anything he's done in spandex over the last few years; it's so goofy and free. But to me the biggest revelation in this movie is probably Tom Cruise — not strictly because of the acting, necessarily, or the fat suit, though he works hard for both, but just that this is the last time I remember him distinctly not playing himself. He's a hairy-knuckled bear-daddy Diet Coke-head with a nuclear rage problem, and he looks like he's having so much fun. I don't know that I've enjoyed him this much as a pure actor, and not as a dude playing the dude who is always Tom Cruise™, since Magnolia .

I also just realized, is there a lady in this movie with a line of dialogue besides "Please hold"? Not that every script has to pass the Bechdel test , but man that is a low ratio, when secondhand Maria Menounos on a closed-circuit TV beamed over the hotel breakfast buffet is your main female.

DARREN: You've also got Tyra Banks, Christine Taylor, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Alicia Silverstone in steadily more cameo-ish cameos. Which could be the point! Like the same summer's Step Brothers , the overriding vibe here is dudely self-destruction. Stiller wrote the screenplay with Etan Cohen and (hello!) Justin Theroux, and it almost feels like they aligned their core characters with the Seven Deadly Sins. Stiller's Tugg Speedman envies Lazarus. Lazarus is a white actor prideful enough to think he can play a black man. Black's Jeff Portnoy is a glutton, like a chocoholic, but for heroin. Grossman's greedy. Brandon Soo Hoo's teen guerilla Tran is all wrath. And, um, is that seven yet?

In a lot of ways, this movie seems like the apex of a particular moment in comedy, sitting alongside 2005's dirty-joke shockfest The Aristocrats and 2006's Borat feature. Back then, it felt like the point of movie comedy was to push past every possible barrier of good taste. (This was also the era when the horror genre slipped into torture porn, a correlation proving nothing except that the 2000s were a weird, dark time.) It's a kick to see how far Tropic Thunder wants to push itself, no doubt. Along with the "full retard" speech (god help me, I laughed again!), there's that bit when Grossman decides the best business move is to let his lead actor die.

We're halfway to Network territory there — but you feel the kid gloves come on after that, like the movie can't get too sharp in its showbiz satire, like there's this quality of safely laughing with instead of dangerously laughing at . I guess it's a tricky question of our age, Leah. Even when a movie explicitly sets out to deconstruct powerful Hollywood men, will it inevitably wind up celebrating them? It looks fun to be a powerful asshat! It's like that old Francois Truffaut line, how there's no such thing as a truly anti-war film, because war inevitably looks awesome on the big screen. I know, I know, quoting Truffaut now are we? , but that could be some ultimate point of Tropic Thunder , too. These dudes go to the jungle looking to make a sober war epic, lose their movie, lose their minds, and still wind up with awards-y financial success. Huzzah for failing upwards!

Cruise as Grossman is a delight. Also, maybe we're just all the way through the rabbit hole here, but I forgot how much I enjoyed McConaughey as Stiller's agent! I've just seen a lot of his Serious Face stuff post-McConaissance, so it's a kick to watch his anxiously fratty agent face off against magisterial Grossman. Can we reunite these two characters in a spinoff? Written by, like, Tina Fey?

LEAH: Darren, this is in my top-three McConaughey performances for sure; my Mconaugh-three. He's not doing Kate Hudson romance or gaunt Oscar bait, but he is acting out the perfect flipside of his '90s John Grisham types: he has a noble cause and he will fight to the death for it! Except the cause is the Tivo clause in his client's set rider , and he will fight unless the death of that client means he gets his own G5.

It's funny what you say about the movie pivoting from satire to self-congratulation, because as two people who work adjacent to show business (and by "adjacent" I mean, like, the seagulls in the dumpster behind the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion), do you think you and I are more susceptible in general to this kind of inside-baseball shenanigans?

Thunder 's whole plot obviously hinges on some knowledge of Hollywood self-regard, but it's not setting a super high bar: Any steady pop-culture consumer would recognize those tropes (like the opening string of fantastically bad fake trailers); they're like an action-movie amuse-bouche that Stiller and Theroux gave us eight years before Deadpool .

Now that you brought up Tina Fey though, the script does feel like a sort of feature-length cousin to one of her and Amy Poehler's Golden Globes monologues: a big, winky pin in the bloated balloon of industry ego. I think they might be better at it than Justin Theroux — but of course 10 killer minutes onstage is not the same as sustaining a whole movie. (And 10 great minutes is about exactly what Sisters had.)

As far as men being both the only target and, in the end, the only heroes here, Cruise's turn did make me think for a minute about another one of my favorite left-field casting coups: Tilda Swinton's ruthless lad-mag editor in Trainwreck . She's just pure, venal joy with no real redemption arc at all, and I loved that.

I'm not really sure how to end this thing, so I'll give you the one of the seven deadly sins you missed: Sloth! I'm tapping out. But I'm glad this assignment made us rewatch and reconsider a movie I probably wouldn't have gone back to without, say, a long weekend in a log cabin with a very limited DVD collection.

My final takeaway is: Brandon T. Jackson is underrated. Cruise and McConaughey definitely need to get weird more often. And if there's going to be any kind of spin-off, I vote for RDJ and Kate McKinnon just jabbering their crazy Australian accents at each other for two straight hours. Fin.

Complete Summer 2008 Schedule:

May 2: Iron Man and Made of Honor

May 9: Speed Racer

May 16: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

May 22: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull

May 30: Sex and the City

June 6: Kung Fu Panda

June 13: The Happening

June 20: The Love Guru

June 27: WALL-E

July 2: Hancock

July 11: Hellboy II: The Golden Army

July 18: The Dark Knight

July 25: Step Brothers

Aug. 1: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Aug. 13: Tropic Thunder

Aug. 22: The House Bunny

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Screen Rant

Tom cruise wants to make les grossman tropic thunder spinoff.

Tom Cruise is reportedly interested in once more teaming up with director Christopher McQuarrie for a Les Grossman Tropic Thunder spinoff project.

Tom Cruise is reportedly interested in developing some type of  Tropic Thunder spinoff involving his character, Les Grossman. Released in 2008,  Tropic Thunder tells the story of a group of actors who attempt to set off into the jungle to create the greatest Vietnam War movie ever made. Directed and starring Ben Stiller,  Tropic Thunder proved generally popular with both audiences and critics and boasted a standout cast, including Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Brandon T. Jackson, Jay Baruchel, and Danny McBride.

While the performances from Stiller and Downey Jr. remain highlights, it's Cruise's cameo as studio executive Les Grossman that has perhaps become one of the most memorable aspects of the film. In a movie filled with wacky characters, Grossman stands alone, defined by angry, profanity-laced outbursts, his love of diet coke, and a penchant for dance. In one of  Tropic Thunder 's more memorable (and meme-able) moments, Grossman turns on "Low" by Flo Rida and dances while the end credits roll. Wearing a bald cap and body prosthetics, the legendary  Mission: Impossible star is nearly unrecognizable in the role.

Related: Why Ben Stiller Wanted To Cut Tom Cruise's Tropic Thunder Dance

Per a new report from  Deadline , Cruise is apparently looking to continue his working relationship with renowned Mission: Impossible franchise director Christopher McQuarrie for several new projects, among them a Grossman spinoff of some sort. It's not clear whether this  Tropic Thunder spinoff would be a movie centered around Grossman or if the Cruise character would simply make a cameo in another project. With Cruise and McQuarrie still filming  Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2  and with Cruise also slated to film a movie in outer space, it's unclear when a Grossman project could actually come to fruition.

While  Cruise's deplorable studio executive from  Tropic Thunder remains a highlight all these years later, it remains to be seen whether the character could carry an entire film. After all, the over-the-top nature of Grossman as a character lends itself more to a cameo-type role rather than the anchor for an entire movie. Despite this, however, it was rumored that a Grossman solo movie was in the works not long after  Tropic Thunder  came out, but the film never ended up coming to fruition. If Cruise does take on the role of Grossman once more, it would certainly mark a significant departure from the types of roles the star has taken on recently.

Now 60 years old, the last decade of Cruise's career has essentially seen the actor double down on one type of role. From  Mission: Impossible and  Oblivion , to  Edge of Tomorrow  and  Top Gun: Maverick , Cruise's recent career has revolved around traditionally likable leading men in action-heavy roles. While once again donning the body prosthetics and bald cap and busting out some dance moves would certainly be a surprising turn from the actor,  Tropic Thunder fans would surely be happy to see Grossman make his big-screen comeback in one form or another.

More: Tropic Thunder: Why RDJ's Blackface Wasn't Controversial  

Source: Deadline

20 facts you might not know about 'Tropic Thunder'

Posted: March 5, 2024 | Last updated: March 12, 2024

War films can be tricky, and war comedies are even trickier. What about a comedy about making a war movie? Tropic Thunder made that a reality. The film spoofs method acting, frequently in uncomfortable ways, and much more. War is hell, but these 20 facts about Tropic Thunder will hopefully be much more pleasant for you.

Ben Stiller had the idea long before he made it

Tropic Thunder wouldn’t be released until 2008, but Stiller first got the idea decades earlier. The actor-turned-director got the first germ for the concept while acting in the war movie Empire of the Sun in 1987.

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Another actor helped write the film

Stiller co-wrote, directed, and starred in  Tropic Thunder . One of the other writers on the movie? Justin Theroux. He’s primarily known as an actor, perhaps best known for The Leftovers . He also has writing credits on Iron Man 2 and Zoolander 2 .

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The plot changed a bit

Tropic Thunder was always going to be about actors taking themselves too seriously, but the nature of the plot changed. Initially, the script was about actors who go to a boot camp and return with PTSD. Then, they pivoted to a version of the story that could also lampoon war movies. The proliferation of celebrity news and companies like TMZ over the years helped make writing the script easier since Stiller and Theroux realized moviegoers would be more aware of the inner workings of Hollywood.

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Stiller didn’t originally intend to star

When Stiller first conceived the film, he thought he would only play the smaller role of Rick Peck, Tugg Speedman’s agent. Keanu Reeves was who he had in mind for the role of Tugg. Eventually, Stiller starred as well as directed.

The big cameo was almost Rick Peck

With Stiller playing Tugg, the role of Rick was offered to…Tom Cruise. Cruise pitched the idea of a studio head character. Stiller went along with it, and thus, the character of Les Grossman, perhaps the best remembered part of the movie, was born.

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Cruise was very serious about keeping his cameo a secret

Cruise buried himself in prosthetics to play Les (the big hands were his idea), and he and Stiller did not want the cameo ruined. Paramount did not release any images of Cruise in the film, and his overall involvement in the movie was supposed to be kept secret. Then, pictures of Cruise in costume popped up online. After this, Cruise’s lawyers sprung into action. Soon enough, the photos of Cruise as Grossman were removed from the internet.

The casting of Rick changed again

With Cruise playing Grossman, somebody still had to play Rick Peck. Enter: Stiller’s frequent co-star Owen Wilson. Sadly, Wilson attempted suıcide in 2007 and understandably dropped out of the role. He was replaced by Matthew McConaughey.

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Kirk Lazarus was changed by Robert Downey Jr.

When the character of Kirk Lazarus was written, he was supposed to be Irish. Perhaps the ultimate method actor was spoofing Daniel Day-Lewis. However, Downey Jr. asked him to be Australian instead. He had done an Australian accent before and felt more comfortable doing comedy and improvising with an Australian accent.

Tobey Maguire swooped in to save the day

The production needed a last-minute replacement for the actor starring alongside Kirk Lazarus in Satan’s Alley . Enter: Maguire. He was only available for two hours but still managed to film his small role. Fittingly, Downey Jr. and Maguire played characters who have a sexual tryst in Wonder Boys .

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A famous comedian turned down a role

Brandon T. Jackson plays Alpa Chino, but the role was initially offered to Kevin Hart. However, Hart turned down the role because he did not want to play a gay character.

Steve Coogan’s character takes inspiration from a real director

Coogan’s Damien Cockburn and his experience are purportedly partially inspired by the saga of South African director Richard Stanley. Stanley had been hired to direct  The Island of Dr. Moreau but was beset by issues on set, including having to deal with Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando, two of the most difficult actors ever to walk the face of the Earth. He was fired and replaced by John Frankenheimer, but Stanley secretly returned to the shooting location to spy on the film. Hey, at least he wasn’t blown up by a landmine.

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Jack Black wasn’t sure about doing the film

Black was offered the role of Jeff Portnoy, but he was initially hesitant. Specifically, he did not like the idea of dying his hair blonde. That ultimately didn’t keep him from doing the film, but he still expressed his displeasure with his hair in the movie. To add injury to insult, Black bruised his ribs early in production and had to gut it out.

They shot in Hawaii

Stiller considered shooting in Southern California, Mexico, or Hawaii. He ended up choosing Hawaii. He shot on the island of Kaua’i, where he just so happened to own a home. The production was the first on the island in five years and was reportedly the largest film production in the history of Kaua’i.

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A revered military adviser worked on the movie

After retiring from the Marine Corps, Dale Dye founded Warriors Inc., a company that provides military training and advisement on films. Over the years, Dye has worked on many serious movies and TV shows, such as Platoon and Band of Brothers . Dye and Warriors Inc. worked on Tropic Thunder . Stiller wasn’t sure how Dye would feel about the film, especially since Nick Nolte plays a character who effectively pokes fun at people like Dye. However, Dye relished the opportunity to work on a broad comedy.

The last day of shooting was an unusual one

The last scene shot for Tropic Thunder ? That would be the commercial for Alpa Chino’s energy drink Booty Sweat. Also, it was shot early on Thanksgiving morning, and after filming, Brandon T. Jackson rushed to the airport to fly home to spend the holiday with his family. By the way, for a brief moment, Booty Sweat was available as a marketing promotion.

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There’s not a lot of death in the film

The war movie filmed in Tropic Thunder is quite gory, and the action gets all too real for the actors. However, this is not a movie with a terribly high body count, at least on screen. Two of the on-screen deaths are animals — a panda and a bat. The other is director Damien Cockburn, whose death is admittedly violent but resulted from an accident.

A mockumentary was made for the movie

Tropic Thunder went all in on the marketing. Part of that was creating a mockumentary about the making of the film being made in Tropic Thunder . The film, which stars Theroux as the documentarian, is called Rain of Madness and serves as a parody of Hearts of Darkness , the iconic documentary about Apocalypse Now .

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It was a big box office hit

Tropic Thunder was moved from a July release date to a mid-August release date, considered a less robust time for films. It was also a time when R-rated comedies had been hitting. The move paid off.  Tropic Thunder was the top movie at the domestic box office for three weeks in a row. The film made $195.7 million worldwide from a budget of $92 million.

The movie received a surprise Oscar nomination

The Golden Globes have categories for musical and comedy films, so the fact Downey and Cruise got nominations is not surprising. However, Downey was a big hit on the award circuit for Tropic Thunder . He was also nominated for a BAFTA, a SAG, and, yes, an Oscar. Downey did not win, losing to Heath Ledger for his turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight . A guy from a comic-book movie beat a guy from a comedy. It was a weird year for the Academy Awards.

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There may be a spinoff

Cruise loves playing Les Grossman. He played him at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, and that year, talk of a spinoff movie about Grossman began. After years of laying fallow, it was reported in 2022 that Cruise and his go-to director Christopher McQuarrie are developing the spinoff once again.

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