‘Anchorman 2’ is off the air
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Thursday’s bit of Hollywood news sponsored by Twitter: The “Anchorman 2” sequel that a few stars from the original had been talking about on the junket circuit is a no-go.
Adam McKay, director and co-writer on the 2004 Will Ferrell comedy hit (and his collaborator on the upcoming “The Other Guys”), says that filmmakers and the studio couldn’t see eye to eye on a budget. “So bummed. Paramount basically passed on Anchorman 2. Even after we cut our budget down. We tried,” he tweeted earlier Thursday afternoon, followed by, a short time later, “To all who asked: no we can’t do Anchorman 2 at another studio. Paramount owns it.”
The Ron Burgundy character from the original is pretty indelible, though hard to imagine what a sequel would have looked like, especially since that kind of ‘70s-skewering has been out of fashion for a while now (put out to pasture in part by Ferrell’s own “Semi-Pro” a couple of years ago).
Of course, the real culprit is not creative but financial: It’s almost impossible to do comedy sequels because the only ones we all want to see are the big hits, and the big hits usually drive everyone’s price up, making a new movie as cost-ineffective as, well, “Anchorman 2” (“Hangover” is the rare exception). No matter. McKay and Ferrell will come up with a new one. We hope.
— Steven Zeitchik
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