Adam McKay Also Confirms The Sequel Won't Be A Musical
While it would be unfair to call it the worst kept secret in the movie universe, it's something that most movie bloggers know — and something a few of them have already reported on, though there's been little concrete information thus far. A teaser trailer for "Anchorman 2" will appear in front of Sacha Baron Cohen's upcoming comedy "The Dictator," which opens next Wednesday, May 16th. Confirmed? Nope. But feel free to bet the farm on Odin's Raven. You can have the keys to our blog if it doesn't happen (cool, right guys?).
How's that, you say? "Anchorman 2" hasn't even been written let alone shot or edited? Correct, all this is true, but the rumor for weeks now has been that "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" director and co-writer Adam McKay, Will Ferrell and his 'Anchorman 2' cohorts would be shooting some kind of brief teaser-trailer for the film to land in front of Cohen's subversive political comedy. What's the connection other than both films being Paramount productions? While McKay has no official credit on the film, the writer/director did help out with it — producing, writing, assisting with the reshoots — according to a recent interview with THR.
While Paramount won't confirm it (or even reply to emails about the subject), it feels like several people have vocalized or shown medium-sized bits of evidence of what most of us already know. This is truly happening (getting Will in hair, make-up and costume isn't difficult as evinced by the recent Conan O'Brien appearance).
And while still unconfirmed, the writing appears to be on the wall. Hell, even McKay teased it today. "See 'The Dictator' (I worked on it and it's crazy funny), in addition to 'Campaign' trailer with Zach [Galifianakis] and Will [Ferrell] there's another treat before it," McKay tweeted (while confirming in another tweet that the film is still being written). Clever way to get extra audience members out to a fellow Paramount film (though it is worth it, read our review).
Meanwhile — something that possibly only this writer cares about and is obsessed with — the question remains if "Anchorman 2" be a musical as it was originally planned. While all signs point to no, thankfully, McKay recently confirmed in the pages of Empire that it was the direction they were going towards. "Originally we were going to [make it as a musical starting with a run on Broadway]," he said when asked about this specific initial plan. "But since they did 'The Book Of Mormon,' which was great and funny, we felt the fun of doing it as a musical had been diluted a little bit. We're going to have songs, but we're not going to do a pure musical."
There you have it. Now I can finally sleep at night knowing the answer. "The Dictator" comes out May 16. "Anchorman 2" won't be in theaters until 2013 or 2014, depending on when the script is done and a shooting schedule is established.