Will Forte Says MacGruber TV Series Could Start Production This Fall

Saturday Night Live veteran Will Forte says that a planned series based on his character MacGruber -- a parody of MacGyver who had a cult-favorite movie in 2010 -- is still on at Peacock, NBC Universal's planned streaming service. With a little luck, the series will begin filming in the fall. While he acknowledged that the wide-reaching impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic could cause things to change, Forte suggested that as far as he knows everything is still on track. He made the comments during a virtual Last Man on Earth cast reunion, and they've been picked up by outlets like Collider.

The series is apparently still in the script stage, and will run for eight episodes. The series was the result of years of trying to get a MacGruber sequel made. In spite of enthusiasm on the creative end (and even some fans at NBC Universal), it struggled to get off the ground because the first one had underperformed at the box office.

"Right now we are finishing the last scripts of an eight-episode series of MacGruber, which fingers crossed will be shot in the fall," Forte said. "We don't officially know that we're greenlit yet, but we're very excited about the stuff we've written so far, and so far we're going ahead as if it's still going on. But who knows, with the current situation in the world, who knows if it gets pushed back. And everything could always just go kaput as per MacGruber, but it's something we're hoping to do and moving towards."

Nobody really knows what the entertainment industry will look like when it comes out of its COVID-19-caused hiatus, and certainly the cashflow issues that it creates may cause some projects to be delayed or cancelled. MacGruber seems like a reasonably safe bet, though, given that is based on an existing piece of intellectual property with a built-in fan base and likely not very expensive to make.

MacGruber was a recurring sketch on SNL, first appearing on the show in January 2007. The sketch is a parody of the original MacGyver, and a bit of a testament to the show's enduring appeal since it debuted 25 years after the Richard Dean Anderson-headlined action series went off the air. The sketches feature Forte as special operations agent MacGruber, who is tasked in each episode with deactivating a ticking bomb, but becomes distracted, and the bomb goes off. Ironically, CBS has revived MacGyver, and it's currently in its fourth season -- meaning that if MacGruber makes it to Peacock there's a very good chance that the two characters will have original adventures at the same time for the first time since MacGruber was created.