Judd Apatow has an impressive number of big hits on his resume, both as a director and as a producer, but one thing that he has never really specialized in is sequels. There is Anchorman 2, and semi-spinoffs like This Is 40 and Get Him To The Greek, but for the most part the movies he’s made have been largely one-and-done. If it were up to him, however, that wouldn’t be the case, as he has evidently spent a good amount of time trying to fight for a Superbad 2
With his new movie Trainwreck screening as a work in progress cut at SXSW this past weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down for a one-on-one with Apatow while in Austin, Texas yesterday, and it was during our chat that he revealed his long interest in bringing back Jonah Hill’s Seth, Michael Cera’s Evan, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s Fogel (a.k.a. McLovin) for another adventure. The subject came up when discussing the idea of potentially taking on a franchise someday - but Apatow also added that Superbad 2 hasn’t happened simply because he can’t get anyone else on-board with the idea. He said,
I always wanted to do a sequel to Superbad, but I couldn’t convince anybody… The actors, no one with Superbad thought we should do another Superbad. But I wanted to do Superbad in college desperately, but no one would listen to me.
Potentially interesting as this idea sounds, the concept of a college-set Superbad 2 would have some hurdles to overcome. For starters, at the end of the first movie, Seth wound up going to a different college than Evan and Fogel – though the idea of Seth making a special trip to visit potentially fixes that issue. The other potential problem is the fact that Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse have aged nearly a decade since the 2007 release of Superbad. The optimistic spin on that, however, is that all three actors have actually played college students very recently, in 22 Jump Street, Arrested Development, and Neighbors, respectively.
As to why Judd Apatow would want to see a Superbad 2 get made, his explanation was actually quite simple: he really enjoyed spending time with the personalities that made the first movie so entertaining, and has an urge to see them on another adventure again. Or as he put it, "I love characters, so I love returning to characters."
Do you think the ship has sailed on the idea of Superbad 2 - in college or not – or is that something that you think you would still like to see? Hit the comments below with your thoughts!
