Variety has confirmed last week’s TMZ scoop that 20th Century Fox has set Ben Stiller and Tom Cruise to play sleuths in The Hardy Men, a Shawn Levy-directed action-comedy based on mystery series “The Hardy Boys.”
Stiller and Cruise have also been actively discussing a potential team-up in Tropic Thunder, the film Stiller will direct next for DreamWorks. The trade adds that such an alliance would be ironic, given that the film would be distributed by Paramount, the studio that unceremoniously severed its long-term deal with Cruise after Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone publicly rebuked the star.
While Tropic Thunder is in the talking stage, Cruise and Stiller are further along on The Hardy Men, which Fox hopes to put into production by 2008. The film marks a reteaming of Levy and Stiller, who are coming off Foxs holiday blockbuster Night at the Museum.
In the film, the Hardy boys, once wunderkind youth sleuths, have grown up. Long estranged, they’re brought together to solve one last case.
Fox is hunting for a screenwriter to do a rewrite.
