Director Rob Reiner confirms that Spinal Tap 2 is very much alive and will go before cameras in a couple of months.
It’s been well over a year since we heard that Castle Rock Entertainment, the brilliant production company that gave us such late 80s/early 90s classics as When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men and Before Sunrise, was reforming. After a stellar run, the company peaked in the mid-90s and was eventually folded into Warner Bros by 2002.
However, Castle Rock Entertainment relaunched its film division in October of 2022, still under the ownership of Warner Bros, and last summer the production company announced its first project: This Is Spinal Tap II.
The legendary ‘rock doc’ spoof was (Castle Rock Entertainment co-founder) Rob Reiner’s first film as director and it was announced last year that he would be returning to make the sequel. Original stars Micheal McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest were all confirmed to be on board, working on the script and reprising their onscreen roles as England’s loudest – and perhaps dimmest – heavy metal band.
Obviously, the industry-wide strikes have thrown plenty of projects into disarray over the last six months, so we were wondering if this might be one of those announced films that could quietly disappear. That appears not to be the case, however, given that Reiner has popped up on the RHLSTP With Richard Herring podcast (thanks, Variety) to announce that the film will begin shooting in February.
Reiner has outlined the plot the film will follow, explaining that the absence of the late Tony Hendra (who played their manager) will be the inciting incident that sparks the band’s resurrection: “The idea was that Ian Faith, who was their manager, he passed away,” says Reiner. “In reality, Tony Hendra passed away. Ian’s widow inherited a contract that said Spinal Tap owed them one more concert. She was basically going to sue them if they didn’t. All these years and a lot of bad blood we’ll get into and they’re thrown back together and forced to deal with each other and play this concert.”
Real-life musical icons Paul McCartney, Elton John and Garth Brooks are all set to appear, while the film is said to mimic the structure of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz. The original release date for the project was slated as the 19th March 2024. That’s clearly fallen by the wayside now, but as it stands, there’s no new release schedule. We’ll let you know more as we hear it.
