If it’s one thing we know about “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” director Adam McKay, it’s that he shoots a lot of footage. There were so many alternate takes from the first ‘Anchorman’ that he cobbled together an entire second movie from the footage, entitled “Wake Up, Ron Burgundy” that was included in special two-packs with the original movie, and has joked that he shot more film for “Step Brothers” than Francis Ford Coppola did for “Apocalypse Now.” But according to a new interview with Empire, McKay is planning an entire alternate version of “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” with completely new jokes. Plus: a brand new poster for the movie!
While explaining why he had to cut the joke in the film’s trailer where the gang (including Will Ferrell, Steve Carell and Paul Rudd) mistakes Matthew Stanton‘s openly gay character for a vampire, McKay says that although the film is locked at an hour and 53 minutes (“The longest one we’ve ever done”), he still wants to release another version of the movie.
“We did so much improv on this one that we can literally replace every single joke in the movie and put in alt scenes and alt improv runs,” McKay explained. And it’s not a pie-in-the-sky idea, either. “I think the editor’s working on it right now, with 250 new jokes.” He even has an idea about how to release this version, “I think it would be really funny to put it in theatres for midnight showings. I know that I personally, if I loved a movie and someone told me that, like if ‘Airplane!’ had been released with all-new jokes, I’d be like, ‘you’ve got to be fucking kidding me!’ I’d see it in a second.” Um, us too, Adam!
Also, in case you need a little more Ron Burgundy in your life, you can take a gander at the new poster for the film, which features the news team as towering behemoths lording over New York City. Classy all the way.
