Thanks to Star Wars, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues has been relegated down to the second most surprising sequel announcement of the year. (Schwarzenegger’s return to the Conan franchise squeaks in as a close third.) And now that a script is being firmed up for shooting to start next March, details about the continuing adventures of the classiest newsman in San Diego and his Action News team are starting to come out.
While speaking to The Playlist, Anchorman director and co-writer Adam McKay revealed that one thing that the film will have is some musical numbers. That’s right, musical numbers.
There will be some music in Anchorman 2 though for sure, we have some songs already written. We were going to do Anchorman 2 as a Broadway musical first, for like six months and then go shoot the movie. That was our initial idea.
McKay elaborated a bit in a way that hints that the songs might be part of more elaborate musical numbers.
The music sequences we have done — we did “Afternoon Delight” [in Anchorman], Adam Scott and his family singing “Sweet Child O’ Mine” [in Step Brothers], we did a whole song for Talladega Nights that got cut out, a big, big musical number — we always do it live on the set… And my thing is, if the actors get freaked out, don’t sweat it, we can always re-record it later. And every time we’ve done it, we end up using the live track from the recording. We’ll probably do it the same way in this. This one might have a little more movement in it, and the only problem with that is the actors get winded.
The director also confirmed that the film’s story was going to take a look at the change in how news is delivered due to the rise of the 24-hour news cycle.
I mean what is this 24 hours news, and this wall of white noise information, has it really been good for our country? The great thing when you find a point of view like that is that it doesn’t have to be preachy or didactic, it’s also funny. It’s just funny that Americans have to contend with 2000 channels, and 60 different specific news sources, and the confusion that it creates, and the junk that we get to see is hilarious. That’s what we’re always kinda looking for, what’s the point of view that’s got life to it and plays.
There’s no release date set for Anchorman 2, though I sould suspect that it won’t be until this year at this time at the earliest before we see it.
