Vince Vaughn Points Finger At Hollywood Execs For Sanitizing Comedy: “They Want To Follow A Set Of Rules”

Comedy has certainly changed since the early aughts, when the likes of Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn ruled the box office with classics like Wedding Crashers, Dodgeball, and Old School. But Vaughn says it’s the Hollywood execs who are to blame.

“They just overthink it,” Vaughn told Hot Ones host Sean Evans during a recent appearance. “It’s crazy, you get these rules… There became some idea or concept, like, they would say something like, ‘You have to have an IP.’”

The actor used the Battleship board game as an example of an IP that execs preferred filmmakers used as a “vehicle for storytelling” because of its name recognition. Fittingly enough, Battleship did inspire its own movie in 2012, starring Liam Neeson, Taylor Kitsch and Rihanna.

“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,” Vaughn 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?’”

Vaughn later noted that the only “IP” they needed to make tentpole comedies like Old School was real life experience.

But the Wedding Crashers star says he expects Hollywood to come back around on this unfortunate trend.

“People want to laugh, people want to look at stuff that feels a little bit like it’s, you know, dangerous or pushing the envelope,” Vaughn explained. “I think you’re going to see more of it in the film space sooner than later, would be my guess.”

This rings true considering the recent success of Deadpool & Wolverine, a franchise that has proven to be as R-rated as it gets nowadays.

Vaughn has continued appearing in comedies in recent years with appearances in Queenpins, North Hollywood and Curb Your Enthusiasm. But it’s a marked change from the R-rated comedies Vaughn and his generation of comedians became known for.

Now, the actor is set to appear in the Apple TV+ series Bad Monkey, a dark comedy about a Miami cop who finds an unusual new case to crack after he gets demoted.

Bad Monkey premieres on Aug. 14.