Y'all, I'm so tired, I could use a whole pallet of Booty Juice, but I can't seem to find it on shelves anymore. Which obviously means it’s beyond time for Ben Stiller & Co. to take audiences back into the world of Tropic Thunder’s all-star actor Tugg Speedman and Tom Cruise’s fan-favorite sleazeball Les Grossman. (Obviously Brandon T. Jackson’s Alpa Chino is also welcome, since Booty Juice was all him.) But how close are we to realistically getting a proper follow-ups?
Earlier in 2025, the Mission: Impossible franchise’s Christopher McQuarrie shared that he and Tom Cruise have had “fucking funny” conversations about Les Grossman, and said that there’s serious consideration been put into how to properly make that reprisal happen. Now, Ben Stiller addressed the idea of another Tropic Thunder project with Esquire, and it sounds like maybe getting into revival mode for the newest Meet the Parents sequel is greasing the mental gears to bring some of these characters back, even if there isn't a solid idea yet. As Stiller put it:
Yeah definitely. I don’t know if it would be a Tropic Thunder sequel, per se, but something in that world, definitely. Tom and I have talked about it. Look, having made a bunch of sequels, it’s like with Fockers—you just want to make sure there’s a reason to do it and that you can do something that’s worthy of those characters. That’s always the challenge.
No shade on any generation within the Focker and Byrnes families, but I have to think if co-screenwriter John Hamburg can coax Stiller, Robert De Niro, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo and others back into the fold for a fourth film in this comedy franchise, somebody can crack the foundation on a way back into Les Grossman’s intimidatingly hairy arms.
Oh wait, what’s this? Ben Stiller already has this idea locked and loaded and is willing to share it with the world? Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but Stiller’s take on Les Grossman’s current career path sounds like an A+ launching pad for a new movie-within-a-movie. As he put it:
I think Les Grossman is going to buy Netflix.
How brilliant would it be for Les Grossman to be one of the various billionaires making headlines for their attempts and interest in spending eleven figures on media companies. I could easily see Tugg Speedman and/or Robert Downey Jr.’s Kirk Lazarus in the middle of filming a movie for a studio that gets bought up in a merger, only for the project to go through major changes to better match Les’ vision. Or maybe it gets turned from an already finished movie into a TV series that requires complicated reshoots
Also, by having Tom Cruise’s character targeting a specific studio or platform, that would seemingly be an easy way to get a greenlight and a nice-sized budget. Whether or not it would end up being Netflix in the end, that’s a decisions to be made in rooms I’ll never see the inside of.
That said,, I think it’s worth pointing out that Tropic Thunder was distributed by Paramount, whose post-Skydance merger boss David Ellison is currently in a seemingly futile bidding war with Netflix to buy out Warner Bros. So I’m thinking DreamWorks Pictures and Red Hour Productions would probably avoid the Paramount route if all involved chose to partner with Netflix. On the flip side, Tom Cruise has been a vital piece of Paramount’s success thanks to Top Gun: Maverick and the Mission: Impossible franchise, so perhaps Les Grossman would try and pull a fast one on Ellison himself.
Ben Stiller has addressed why Tropic Thunder itself probably couldn't be made today, given the use of blackface (ironic or otherwise) and certain terminology. But it's not like that movie wasn't funny for 1,000 reasons beyond that. If we want more cringe moments, we don't need anything racial. Just throw Tim Robinson into the mix.
Seriously, though, even if it takes eons for this Tropic Thunder follow-up to come together, can we at least revive Booty Juice for 2026?
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