As if the pain of knowing that the Anchorman sequel came close to reality with only budget issues shooting it down wasn’t bad enough, Adam McKay had to go and rub comedy salt into the wound by revealing the utterly inspired, if next-to-impossible plan he had for the film: a musical.
Now, this is Adam McKay we’re talking about, the co-writer and director behind the film, so we’re pretty certain he’s just kidding. But if he wasn’t, the idea would have been glorious. "It was a musical," he tells CHUD. "We were going to do four months on Broadway and then jump right into filming.”
Sadly for McKay, Will Ferrell and the rest of the Anchor-gang, the costs just didn’t add up for Paramount, which turned down a request for a $60 million budget to make the movie work, musical or no. And now it would seem that McKay and co have made peace with the idea. "There's no hard feelings," he says. "We have some cool projects set up at Paramount. We've moved on.”
Still, Empire recently had a chance to speak two other key Anchormen, Steve Carell and Paul Rudd. And they revealed that while they’re both very open to the idea, they understand the studio’s budget-restricted view of the situation. “It wasn't a smash hit opening weekend,” Rudd told us. “It didn't lose money, but it wasn't The Hangover, so you look at the figures of when it was in cinemas and it's not automatic. You don't take into account DVD sales or how it's grown over the years and so you punch in those numbers and a figure comes up for the budget and for what they might have in mind, there's a chasm.”
“I selfishly want to do it again just for the fun of it. And I think it could be as playful and as fun as the original,” says Carell.
We’ll have more from those two soon, around the release of their latest collaboration, Dinner for Schmucks.