ComingSoon recently had the chance to talk with Nicholas Stoller, writer and director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the upcoming comedy, Get Him To The Greek. Stoller chatted about some of his upcoming projects, including the new movie based on the popular Hasbro toy, Stretch Armstrong.
The movie, which will star The Twilight Saga‘s Taylor Lautner, is based on the toy of the same name, which is distinguishable by its squishy body that was able to stretch out to great lengths. The script was originally penned by Steve Oedekerk, but when Monsters vs. Aliens director Rob Letterman was hired to helm, he decided to bring in another writer, and Stoller asked him for the chance. The duo recently worked together on Letterman’s Gulliver’s Travels, which stars Jack Black and Stoller’s good friend Jason Segel.
The curious — and perhaps best — thing that’s going on with this project, is that Stoller is 100% aware of how cheesy this movie sounds, and how little expectation a lot of people have for it. This puts him in a prime position to shock and awe people with an unexpectedly enjoyable superhero movie, which he plans to set up as an origins tale in the same vein as Iron Man, but not quite to that extent.
Rob had a great take on ‘Stretch’ and he told me about it, and I said, ‘Please let me write it.’ It’s a superhero origin story taking it totally seriously, kind of in the ‘Iron Man’ tone—for lack of a better descriptor. We’re taking it seriously, but it will have a light tone to it. Hasbro has an idea of it and it’s based on a new version of that character. It’s kind of a blank slate. There wasn’t really much of a backstory to the original Stretch Armstrong so we’re just kind of inventing it from the ground up.
With ‘Stretch,’ I don’t think there are a ton of original Stretch Armstrong fans out there. It’s more about creating a universe of superheroes that I’m really excited about. Rob and I have cracked a pretty cool story I think and Rob has a really cool take on what this can be, and it’s going to be a huge budget spectacular thing. I love ‘Iron Man,’ I love ‘The Dark Knight’ and it’s exciting to get to play in this world, because the budgets of these comedies are pretty small, and to get to do something that’s just gigantic and exciting but a totally grounded human story at the center of it that I think people are going to respond to.
So there you have it. Could it possibly be that Stretch Armstrong might surprise us when it comes out, or is there still little hope?
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