Ben Stiller Directs Tropic Thunder

Now that Night at the Museum has earned him enough money to keep his kids in jeweled tiara’s for another year, Ben Stiller is planning to get back to the kind of creative control that made movies like Zoolander and The Cable Guy possible. Ok, maybe it’s not necessarily a good thing.

But Ben’s next movie will likely end up being one he helms himself. Production Weekly says Stiller will direct and star in a comedy called Tropic Thunder. The name sounds like a type of tanning lotion, but the film will be about the production of a big-budget war movie where everything goes horribly wrong. Eventually things get so mixed up that the actors involved end up becoming the army commandos they’re supposed to be playing. Must be something in the water.

Ben has been working on Tropic Thunder since 1987 when he worked on Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. He co-wrote the script with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen (note the lack of an “h” in his first name) and the film starts shooting this July.

Josh Tyler