Comments
The 2000s were a heyday for Will Ferrell. The comedic actor used his final years on Saturday Night Live to launch a film career, and quickly went from appearances and supporting roles (Austin Powers, Zoolander) to starring roles in classic comedy films like Old School (2003), Elf (2003), Anchorman (2004), and the cult classics Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) and Step Brothers (2008). Some of those aforementioned films have gotten sequels (Anchorman 2, Zoolander 2), while others have somehow not.
Talladega Nights and Step Brothers are two of Ferrell’s films that fans have wanted sequels to, so why has it never happened? What many casual viewers might not realize is that many of Ferrell’s biggest films between 2004 and 2013 were directed by Adam McKay. However, after that period of time, Ferrell and McKay seemed to go their separate ways, but has enough time passed for them to reconsider and revisit some old projects?
Adam McKay Speaks On Relationship With Will Ferrell
Business Insider has an extensive interview with Adam McKay, in which the filmmaker addresses the era of his work collaborating with Will Ferrell. Despite their breakup, McKay insists that the door is still open, creatively, for them to collab again: “I totally have been open to the idea. We always got along great; we were tremendous creative partners. The only thing that caused acrimony between us was when we decided to end our production company, Gary Sanchez. And I know it was reported one way or the other, but that was really it.”
For those who don’t recall: Gary Sanchez Productions was a production company that McKay and Ferrell launched in 2006, which finally closed its doors in 2019. During that run, Gary Sanchez helped launch an entire new generation of comedic filmmakers and actors, including Jody Hill and Danny McBride (The Foot Fist Way, Eastbound & Down), Leslye Headland (Bachelorette, The Acolyte), Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters), Etan Cohen (Get Hard), and others. The company also produced some landmark TV shows like Funny or Die Presents, Comedy Central’s Drunk History, or HBO’s Emmy-sweeping mega-hit, Succession. But when the company ended, it was reported that it also ended Ferrell and McKay’s working relationship. Now, seven years later, McKay doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge. So could things move forward?
Could Talladega Nights 2 & Step Brothers 2 Finally Be Happening?
In the same interview, McKay revealed that there is already a bit of foundation for both a Talladega Nights sequel and Step Brothers 2, with the latter being much further along in development than the former.
When asked if he and Ferrell had ever jotted down ideas for Ricky Bobby’s next movie, McKay said, “Yes. But not as seriously as Step Brothers [2]. For Step Brothers, we had a whole treatment written and worked out. We did have an idea for Talladega Nights [2]. It was that Ricky Bobby was going to hook up with an F1 team, and he was going to race in Denmark or the Netherlands and feel like he’s in a communist country because they have nationalized healthcare. So, along with struggling with how fast those F1 cars go, he would have clashed with far-left-leaning Europe compared to America.”
That would’ve been a hilarious concept for a sequel in the 2000s, although it’s arguably more viable now, when F1 racing has blown up into such a bigger international sport and a pop-culture staple. In fact, McKay and Ferrell could almost do a send-up of F1: The Movie, which featured Brad Pitt as an aged NASCAR driver who makes the jump to F1 racing. The timing couldn’t be better.
Of course, timing was never the problem: workload was. Ironically, the technical demands of making a racing film (even a comedic spoof of one) like Talladega Nights wore McKay and Ferrell down so much that they eagerly jumped into a domestic comedy like Step Brothers as the alternative to doing a sequel:
“The only reason we didn’t do it was that it’s a lot of work to shoot race car stuff,” McKay explained. The reason we went and did Step Brothers next was we felt like, can we just go do comedy in a house? We were tired after Talladega Nights. It never got to the point where we wrote a [sequel] treatment. Whereas with the Step Brothers sequel, we were almost going to do it.
In Step Brothers, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play two 40-something men-children still living with their respective single parents. But when those two parents meet, fall in love, and marry, they must contend with their respective sons trying to poison the relationship for their own juvenile reasons. By the end, the family was united, with Ferrell and Reilly’s characters embracing each other as step-brothers. The comedic potential for a sequel is endless, especially twenty years later, when the “Step Brothers” term could be flipped any number of ways.
Would you want to see a sequel to Talladega Nights and/or Step Brothers? Let us know in the comments!
5 Most Powerful Batman Movie Villains, Ranked
