Although Iron Man was the biggest movie Robert Downey Jr. starred in during 2008, as it kicked off his 10-movie run as Tony Stark and propelled him to new levels of popularity, let’s not forget he also played Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder that same year. The comedy saw him playing an extremely method Australian actor who inappropriately donned blackface to inhabit the role of Lincoln Osiris, and one of Downey’s costars was Tom Cruise, who played the foul-mouthed, ill-tempered studio executive Les Grossman. However, Downey and Cruise never shared any actual screen time in Tropic Thunder, and the former brought that up when he was asked about Tropic Thunder 2.
15 years after Tropic Thunder’s release, every now and then, there’s still chatter about releasing some kind of follow-up, whether that be a direct sequel or the long-talked-about spinoff centered on Grossman. The former was specifically brought up while Downey was talking with ExtraTV about his new show Downey’s Dream Cars (which can be streamed with a Max subscription), with the interviewer mentioning that Cruise is interested in doing another Tropic Thunder movie, and then asking if Downey was game. That led to the following interaction:
