A racing comedy hit in 2006, Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby didn’t get a sequel. Director Adam McKay describes the idea we never got to see. Emerging two years after the success of Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy, 2006’s Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby was another comedy hit for star ... Talladega Nights | Director Adam McKay describes the sequel idea that never happened
A racing comedy hit in 2006, Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby didn’t get a sequel. Director Adam McKay describes the idea we never got to see.
Emerging two years after the success of Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy, 2006’s Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby was another comedy hit for star Will Ferell and writer-director Adam McKay.
Moving from the 70s newsroom of Anchorman to the macho world of NASCAR – the all-American genre of racing where they go round in circles very quickly – the high-octane comedy was an even bigger draw in cinemas.
The elaborate (and nicely shot) racing sequences also meant that it was quite expensive for a comedy of that vintage, however, with a budget of $72.5 million. Anchorman cost less than half as much to make, and McKay essentially shot it twice (the cut scenes were eventually released as Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie).
Because revival screenings are a great way to help cinema chains pay their bills, Talladega Nights is getting a re-release in certain cinemas – London’s Prince Charles is showing it on the 20th July.
To promote that re-release, Adam McKay spoke to Business Insider about his 2006 comedy, and described the sequel idea he and Ferrell once had. It would have seen Ferrell’s Ricky Bobby head to Europe and enter the world of Formula One.
“We did have an idea for Talladega Nights [2],” McKay said. “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.”
This sounds remarkably like the plot of last year’s F1: The Movie, in which Brad Pitt played an American race driver-for-hire who heads to Europe (well, the UK) and joins a Formula One team. There wasn’t much talk of the NHS or state pensions, though.
According to McKay, Talladega Nights 2 never happened because “it’s a lot of work to shoot race car stuff”, and so he and Ferrell opted to make Step Brothers instead.
“We felt like, can we just go do a comedy in a house?” he said. We were tired after Talladega Nights. It never got to the point where we wrote a treatment. Whereas with the Step Brothers sequel, we were almost going to do it.”
The interview also goes into McKay and Ferrell’s strained working relationship following the closure of their production company – the filmmaker adding that he’d happily make another movie with Ferrell again.
It’s unlikely that Talladega Nights will happen now, of course, which is almost a pity – this writer would certainly pay to see a parody of Brad Pitt’s F1 star vehicle (which was nominated for Best Picture, no less).
You can read the full interview over at Business Insider.
