New Line giving National Lampoon's Vacation franchise to Horrible Bosses writers

By Sean O'Neal | February 28, 2012 | 5:32pm

Aux Features Film

New Line’s attempt to reopen the soiled picnic basket of the National Lampoon’s Vacation franchise is moving ahead, with Variety reporting that Horrible Bosses screenwriters John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein are now in negotiations to direct the reboot or continuation, or whatever you want to call it. The “rebootiuation,” maybe. That’s fine. Anyway, this is a significant change from the last time the project surfaced, when Get Smart and The Longest Yard director Peter Segal was in talks to revive yet another aged comedy property with the “tailor-made for 3 p.m. on TBS” sensibilities for which he is so recognized. Instead, the studio is ready to take a chance on first-time feature directors Daley and Goldstein, based on their screenplay’s enthusiastic vision for reviving the series, the box-office returns of Horrible Bosses, and the belief that pretty much anyone who starred in Freaks And Geeks can make a movie.

As previously reported, the new Vacation will center on an all-grown-up Rusty Griswold—Clark’s chameleon son, who can mold his height, hair color, and facial structure, or even regress in age to better adapt to his surroundings—with Rusty taking his own family on their own doomed quest for Wally World and [insert road trip shenanigans here]. Casting is still up in the air, though as we mentioned before, Daley and Goldstein see Rusty—like his father—as “an everyman, goodhearted, maybe a little bit of a doofus,” which means that the modern-day, rage-filled Anthony Michael Hall is out of the question, unless they need him to make a cameo as, say, a guy who tries to run the Griswolds off the road for laughs. So probably expect to hear rumors of Ed Helms or Jason Segel’s involvement any day now.