Masi Oka–who plays one of two bumbling gadget-makers in the upcoming spy comedy Get Smart–told reporters that his and co-star Nate Torrence’s Bruce and Lloyd take center stage in a spinoff DVD movie that comes out at about the same time, a first for a major studio release.
“We’ve already finished shooting a full-length DVD feature,” Oka (NBC’s Heroes) said in a news conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., over the weekend. “It’s … parallel content, and for those of you who know the Tom Stoppard reference, if Get Smart … is Hamlet, we did an equivalent of what would be … Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.”
Get Smart, which stars Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart and Anne Hathaway as Agent 99, is based on the 1960s spy comedy TV series. Bruce and Lloyd are new characters, comic foils to the spies, who appear briefly in the main movie but are the center of attention in the DVD film, called Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control.
“It’s a fun little movie, and it’s kind of cool,” Oka said. “It’s basically focusing on what we’re doing [when] Max and 99 take off on their mission. We have our own mission. … It’s really unique as far as it being an industry first, where … you’re going to have all these characters going on in the box office, and then 10 days later, you get to … watch these different characters work in their own settings. We have our own office, … where we go to make all of our inventions and things like that. So it’s kind of cool. I’m really excited. I think it has a good future, hopefully.”
The spinoff movie will feature glimpses of characters and clips from the main film and was shot using many of the same sets, Oka added. “There’s a lot more cameos from the original film that we’re not allowed to talk about because it’s top secret,” Oka said.
The concept for the spinoff evolved during the making of Get Smart, Oka said. “Originally, it was supposed to be all improvised or something, … because while we were shooting it, … [it] was, like, behind the scenes,” he said. “[They] were just going to shoot DVD footage of us just goofing off.”
But producers quickly decided that wouldn’t work. “That ended up not being that practical,” producer Alex Gartner said.
Bruce and Lloyd is slated to come out July 1; Get Smart opens in theaters June 20. –Patrick Lee, News Editor 
