If you thought the scene in the ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES trailer featuring the Channel 4 News Team confusing a gay reporter with a vampire was hilarious, you will not be seeing it in the final theatrical film hitting on December 20th. Director Adam McKay told Empire that the already 113 minute film is the longest he and Will Ferrell have done to date and some of their favorite scenes couldn’t make it into the finished product. But, McKay has an idea.
You may recall that when the original ANCHORMAN hit DVD it came with a second film titled WAKE UP, RON BURGUNDY. That movie was cobbled together with the excised scenes and improv material that was shot during ANCHORMAN’s production. While ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES is not going to get a spin-off, McKay wants to make an alternate cut 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. I think the editor’s working on it right now, with 250 new jokes. 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.”
Can you imagine going to see ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES and seeing a totally different version the second time around? I would love it if McKay and Paramount simply shipped random versions of the film around the country and left it to chance which version audiences got to see. That would definitely make me want to see it again in the theater.