Vince Vaughn says producers won’t make R-rated comedies because they are scared of being fired
Actor Vince Vaughn has offered his opinion about producers in Hollywood being fearful of greenlighting R-rated comedies. The Wedding Crashers and Swingers star believes that Hollywood executives are too cautious when considering the more raunchy type of comedy films that helped launch his career.
Also known for playing roles in Old School, Dodgeball and The Break-Up, Vaughn recently appeared on an episode of Hot Ones and spoke damningly about how difficult it seems to be to get a certain kind of comedy movie through the door into an actual production phase.
“They just overthink it,” Vaughn said. “And it’s like, it’s crazy. You get these rules. If you did geometry and said 87 degrees was a right angle, then all your answers are messed up instead of 90 degrees. So there became some idea or concept, like, they would say something like, ‘You have to have an IP.'”
Evidently, Hollywood is obsessed with getting movies made as Intellectual Property rather than as standalone movies. Vaughn went on to speak on the 2012 film Battleship, based on the board game of the same name, which highlights how Hollywood producers are only really interested in something with an already recognisable name.
“The people in charge don’t want to get fired more so than they’re looking to do something great, so they want to kind of follow a set of rules that somehow get set in stone, that don’t really translate,” the actor explained. “But as long as they follow them, they’re not going to lose their job because they can say,’ Well, look, I made a movie off the board game Payday, so even though the movie didn’t work, you can’t let me go, right?'”
Still, despite the challenges that comedy actors like Vaughn face in getting to star in new R-rated comedy movies, the actor still believes that there is room for them in the modern Hollywood market. According to Vaughn, the audience still wants to laugh at things that feel a “little bit dangerous or push the envelope”.
Vaughn also hopes that there will be a changing of the guard in Hollywood soon that would lead to more of those kinds of movies getting greenlit. The 2000s were brim full of Vaughn-starring comedy movies, but things seemed to have moved on since that point in time, with different angles in the genre being taken.
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