James R | On 18, Jan 2020

MacGruber will return to our screens for a new series on US streaming service Peacock.

The NBCUniversal platform, which joins a wave of new streaming services, such as HBO Max and Disney+, will see NBC take back its own content rather than licence it out to platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. It will also see NBC develop a range of new projects, and MacGruber is leading the pack of new series that lean heavily towards comedy.

Starring and co-written by Will Forte, it sees the actor revive his character who first originated back on Saturday Night Live as a parody of MacGyver. Forte and Jorma Taccone turned him into a big-screen star with a 2010 action comedy called simple MacGruber, co-starring Kristen Wiig, Val Kilmer and Ryan Phillipe. While a sequel to the cult favourite never emerged, MacGruber will instead come to Peacock, with Jorma Taccone also writing and directing, alongside fellow writer and exec-producer John Solomon.

It catches up with MacGruber after America’s ultimate hero and uber patriot has rotted in prison for over a decade. Finally released, his mission is to take down a mysterious villain from his past—Brigadier Commander Enos Queeth. With the entire world in the crosshairs, MacGruber (Will Forte), Vicki, and Piper must race against time to defeat the forces of evil. Only to find that evil… may be lurking within.

The project is joined by Clean Slate, a new series from Laverne Cox, Expecting, a new show exec-produced by Mindy Kaling, Division One, a sporting comedy-of-age comedy exec-produced by Amy Poehler and Hatching Twitter, an anthology tech drama from New York Times best-selling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent Nick Bilton.

Peacock launches in the US this July (for more information, see here), with no confirmed production date, let alone release date, for MacGruber.

With Comcast now the owners of Sky in the UK, and with Peacock based on the infrastructure used by Sky’s own streaming interfaces, it is likely that Peacock will not launch in the UK at all, with NBC content instead heading to Sky. Watch this space for more information about UK availability as we get it.

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