When word first came out a few weeks ago that MacGruber director Jorma Taccone and star Will Forte were going to write a sequel to the Saturday Night Live spinoff film, it was easy to be skeptical. The film tanked at the box office after all, and bombs generally don’t stand a chance in hell of getting one.

But in an interview with Crave, Forte has indeed confirmed that he will definitely be sitting down with Taccone to write a follow up to the first film, even if there might not be a much of a chance of it ever getting made.

I guess the best way to put it is the probability of us writing a Macgruber 2 script in the next six months is 100%. The probability of somebody giving us money to make that script is somewhat less than 100%. We would do it if someone were to let us do it… We will definitely write a MacGruber 2 if only just to have fun. Like people who are into sports will go out and play pickup basketball. Comedy nerds will go write scripts. We actually have some ideas written down already and a couple of scenes but we’ve got to figure out exactly what we’re going to do. We’re definitely going to write it. It’s just a matter of if anybody would ever let us make it.

So there you go. Do you believe that this will ever get any further than Forte and Taccone’s computers? So is it fan fiction if its written by the character’s creator?

It used to be that a film had to be a runaway success to get a sequel, but now it looks like it might not even have had to break even. Despite fervent reviews in some sectors of the online press, 2010′s MacGuyver spoof MacGruber didn’t really do much at the box office, falling short of even making back its modest, $10 million budget. But that is not stopping director Jorma Taccone and star Will Forte from developing a sequel.

Taccone was speaking with Screen Crush and stated -

It would be me, Will and John [Solomon] writing it again. Every time I hang out with Will, we talk about all our cool ideas for the sequel. We have the idea for it and we have a title, but I won’t tell you what it is.

Taccone does let slip that a sequel would take place at Christmas time, just like Die Hard, and that MacGruber and Kristin Wiig’s Vicki St. Elmo character would not have a baby.

This may not happen soon though, as Taccone states he is currently developing two other projects – The Great Unknown and a mystery, as-yet-unannounced Adam Sandler project. In the meantime, Forte has just signed on to Alexander Payne’s next project, Nebraska, while a post-Bridesmaids Wiig’s schedule is filling up fast.

While the original MacGruber bits on Saturday Night Live were amusing, stretching a one joke premise out to feature film length just felt tedious. And now they want to do it again? The first film fell short of making back its reported budget by $700,000 and even if it has managed to gain a cult audience since then, I am not sure that DVD/blu-ray sales would still be enough to push this over into the black once you factor in the usual advertising and publicity costs. They certainly can’t be counting on co-star Wiig’s new found heat to help drive box office for a second film, could they?

1. Shrek Forever After  (Paramount/Dreamworks, 4,359 Theaters, 93 Minutes, Rated PG): The Shrek franchise is one of the highest grossing ones of all time. The voice actors do minimal work yet it most likely is the most lucrative of their careers. The concept has endless possibilities. Yet, this will be the last Shrek film forever?

Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it.

Shrek misses being an ogre, so he makes a deal with a mystical being to have one more day of feeling wild and untamed. Unfortunately, this mystical being he makes the agreement with is Rumplestiltskin, whose every deal he makes is more of a trick. Now Shrek finds himself hunted, Puss in Boots fat, and having never met Donkey or Fiona. He must find a way to return things to normal before the changes become permanent.

If this is the last installment of the franchise, then I hope it goes out with a bang. The premise doesn’t seem like one that would be all that spectacular. But, who knows? This film might be the last in name only.

2. MacGruber (Universal, 2,551 Theaters, 99 Minutes, Rated R): There seems to be some mistaken belief that Saturday Night Live is still a breeding ground for sketches that can be turned into sure fire box office hit movies. But there are far more misses (Superstar, A Night at the Roxbury, Coneheads, The Ladies Man) than there are hits (Blues Brothers, Wayne’s World). And I think this one is going to land in the miss column.

MacGruber is a series of sketches usually used as cut-aways before commercials on SNL. The entire premise can be boiled down to one thing: What if MacGyver was incompetent. That’s it, that’s all. It is a wonder how they got as many sketches as they did out of that concept, let alone a film.

This film feature MacGruber being called in to track down a terrorist who has stolen a nuclear bomb. Add to that stale concept a bunch of quirky, vaguely filthy sounding names and the lead character’s bungling, bumbling incompetence and you have what they’d like you to believe is hilarity.

The sketches are usually my clue to go to the bathroom or fix myself a snack on the rare occasions I watch SNL. So why would I want to pay money to see it in the theaters?

Over the next several days we’re going to take a look at the summer movie season month by month, highlighting some of the movies that we’re anxious to see, sometimes for reasons you wouldn’t expect.

Iron Man 2 (May 7) – If you told me ten years ago that an Iron Man film would be the big film to kick off the summer movie season, I would have said you were crazy. But, here we are and not only is an Iron Man film kicking off the summer movie season, but it is also a sequel to boot! Strange days, indeed.

This highly awaited follow up to 2008’s surprise hits ups the ante a number of ways. One way is by loading the film with fan favorite characters from the comic book—War Machine, Whiplash, Justin Hammer, Black Widow, etc. This stratagem of overcrowding seldom works, but the engine behind Iron Man seems so f00l proof that it should be able to overcome it.

The plot pertains to a man who Tony Stark’s father slighted in the past coming back for revenge on Tony. While he’s dealing with that, Tony has to fend off a U.S. Government that wants to get its hands on the Iron Man suit and a rival who wants to bring him down. – William Gatevackes

Babies (May 7) – Why on earth would I ever want to see the film Babies? Full disclosure, I do not have a paternalistic bone in my body. It has never occurred to me EVER to even consider having a child of my own. On top of that, I have a sneering dislike for almost anything other people label as “cute”, and babies are the very definition of cute.

But, the coming attraction for the film Babies hooked me. Yes the babies in the trailer looked adorable, but there was something intriguing about the fact that the film was going to look at babies in San Francisco, Mongolia, Namibia and Japan. Add to that an article I read where the films director Thomas Balmes said that he approached the film as if he were doing a wildlife documentary, so maybe the film will avoid falling into the “cute” trap.

The only thing that will ruin the experience will be if the audience is especially noisy with the oooing and aahhhing when the babies do the kind things that babies do all the time like drool and poop their pants. We’ll see. – Michael McGonigle

MacGruber (May 21) – Let’s face it. The batting average for movie’s spun-off from the long-running sketch series Saturday Night Live has been pretty low. For every hit like The Blues Brothers or Wayne’s World there’s been a number of Superstars, The Ladies Mans and Wayne’s World 2s. At first glance, turning a 30-second bit into a a feature-length movie seems like a daunting task, but when the premise is a parody of the 80s action series MacGuyver, star and co-writer Will Forte has a lot of room to play up the broader conventions of that show and its genre. Plus we have Val Kilmer, who doesn’t do as near as much comedy for my taste, as the film’s villain. – Rich Drees

Sex And The City 2 (May 27) – Having seen only a handful of episodes of the popular HBO series, there’s no way that I could be accused of being a fan of Sex And The City. While I’m certainly not in the show’s target audience – I don’t even pretend to understand the show’s elevation of footwear to a form of pagan idolatry – I could see the appeal for those who were.

When I finally caught up with the (admittedly overlong) big screen coda to the series, I was impressed at how creator Michael Patrick King managed to craft a story that could stand alone for those of us not overly familiar with the HBO series, butstill managed to please its legions of fans, as well as providing some nice closure for his four lead characters. But where does one go after “Happily ever after”? And can King tell that story in a way that allows for actual character growth but doesn’t alienate the core fan base who want their happy endings? It’ll be a tricky path to walk, no matter what the footwear. – RD