NBC has released the first trailer for its upcoming action comedy series MacGruber.
The trailer finds MacGruber (Will Forte) in jail for undisclosed reasons, where he is a "problem inmate" who regularly gets into fights with other prisoners that end in him ripping their throats out with his bare hands. This changes when General Barrett Fasoose (Laurence Fishburne) offers MacGruber freedom in exchange for him working with the U.S. government to take down Brigadier Commander Enos Queeth (Billy Zane, replacing Mickey Rourke), a renegade soldier who killed MacGruber's mother. With the help of Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and Dixon Piper (Ryan Philippe), Mac sets out for his revenge.
MacGruber began its life as a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live. In each segment, MacGruber and his team would be trapped in a locked room with a ticking time bomb and only seconds to spare. Mac would attempt to defuse the bomb using everyday objects, but would inevitably get distracted by some trivial personal problem, causing time to run out and the bomb to explode. The sketch was a parody of the '80's adventure series MacGyver, with the show's star Richard Dean Anderson eventually reprising his role in a sketch where he was revealed as MacGruber's long lost father (meaning that the hero's full name was "MacGruber MacGyver.") In the upcoming show, MacGruber's father, Perry, will be played by Sam Elliott.
The sketches eventually spawned a feature adaptation, 2010's MacGruber, which was directed by SNL writer and The Lonely Island co-founder Jorma Taccone. MacGruber was met with mixed reactions and flopped at the box office, but has since been regarded as a cult classic by comedy fans. The first season of the MacGruber show was officially announced on Jan. 16, 2020, and will serve as a sequel to the film, with Taccone returning to direct all eight episodes.
The first look at MacGruber came in the form of an interview, with a journalist talking to the incarcerated Mac. The video both recaps the broad strokes of MacGruber's backstory and catches audiences up as to where he's been since the movie. It ends with the promise that the only way MacGruber could possibly get out of jail would be if the American government faced an existential threat to its continued exists the he and only he could handle.
All eight episodes of MacGruber's first season will release Dec. 16 on Peacock.
Source: YouTube