Exclusive: Rob Corddry Talks ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’

This Friday marks a big weekend for fans of both science fiction and comedy as Hot Tub Time Machine opens across the country. We’re going to be bringing you coverage and goodies from the film all week, starting today. We recently got the chance to sit down with one of the film’s stars, Rob Corddry, and he was able to talk to us about not only the film, but his interest in an upcoming comic book project.

The Flickcast: The world of science fiction can be a tricky, and certainly a contrived world. How was it for you, getting your head around a concept like Hot Tub Time Machine?

Rob Corddry: Well, we had a roundtable meeting when we first got brought on to the film. We were all sitting in a room at MGM. The writers, and the cast, and we were talking about time travel. We had to have spent 4 or 5 hours talking about the logic of time travel as it was in the movie.

We couldn’t really figure it out, and we realized that every time somebody makes a time travel movie, this discussion takes place, and nobody ever figures it out. [laughs] If anybody figures it out, they would essentially figure out time travel.

So we decided that we had to set some rules and stick to them. What we inevitably did was just pick the simplest ones so that we could get to the comedy.

TF: Do you think that the success of The Hangover laid a lot of ground for potential success of another buddy comedy like this one?

RC: I’m not sure. I know that the concept isn’t foreign to the world of comedy. The Hangover made way more money than most of the others have, which may have made money people prick up their ears a bit more. This movie was actually pre-written and cast before The Hangover.

I actually saw the film while we were shooting the movie, so I think if anything, The Hangover proved that you don’t need a bunch of stars to make a successful comedy. It will give people like me, Craig Robinson, and Clark Duke the chance that now Ed Helms and Zach Galifiniakis got with the success of that film.

TF: Do you think there’s a possibility for a Hot Tub Time Machine 2?

RC: I think it all comes down to money. If this film does as well as it should, I can definitely see us doing a sequel, but if not, I can’t see it happening.

TF: You’ve been on quite the upswing lately. What else do you have on the horizon?

RC: I just finished shooting season 2 of my TV show. It was originally a web series called Children’s Hospital and now we’re doing it on Adult Swim this summer. July 11th, the web series premiers, and then we go right into season 2.

I believe we were the only web series to get picked up and turned into a network show. It was kind of a failed experiment that was born out of the strike, and it was the only thing we could really do at the time. A lot of web series came out of the strike, and studios treated them like free development, so none of them really went anywhere, unfortunately.

TF: If there was one project that you wish you could do, moving forward, what would it be?

RC: I want to play a rock star, though I think I’m getting too old for that. I want to play a baseball player, and I want to play a super hero. I probably won’t get the chance to do any of that, except for the baseball player. I have a baseball player’s body. I just read a script based on a comic book called The Boys, which is great, and I just loved it.

I’m sure there are plenty of parts in there for 30-40 aged males, so hopefully there will be something.

Hot Tub Time Machine hits theaters this Friday.