In recent years, I've had the opportunity to talk with both Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow about the idea of a Superbad 2, and in each separate conversation I was met with a different attitude. While it turns out that a direct follow-up was something that Apatow always wanted to do, Rogen could never get on-board with an idea, and a project never developed. When I recently presented the same question to Superbad director Greg Mottola , he sided with Rogen on the idea, believing that a direct sequel would have been unnecessary... but he does have a desire to do a big reunion movie that would bring back absolutely everybody from the original film.
Mottola's latest film, Keeping Up With The Joneses, is now in theaters, and when I had the chance to speak with the filmmaker on the phone last week, I dedicated my last question to asking about his thoughts on the Superbad 2 that never came together. Telling the director about my previous conversations with Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow, I asked which side of the issue he personally landed on -- and the director explained why he never wanted to make a sequel, and explained what he wants to do instead. Said Mottola,
I would love to reunite with every single person who worked on that movie, but we all feel like we got to do something special when no one was looking, and we certainly don't want to shit on it. But I keep pitching, 'Let's just get everyone together and shoot a different movie with all the same cast, down to like the one line parts. Get every last person into a different movie.' I would love to see that. I'll have to see if he'll take me up on that. But yeah, maybe when everyone is like 20 years older.
To do the math so that you don't have to, Superbad first came out in 2007, so making a reunion movie 20 years on would mean waiting until 2027 to see the finished product. It would definitely have to be a very different film than the high school set comedy, but the possibilities are really infinite.
As for Superbad 2 specifically, Greg Mottola further explained that there definitely was a time when he was working alongside Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg to try and come up with a sequel idea that they liked, but that the project simply died because it proved to be an impossible task:
Seth and I talked about it. He and Evan Goldberg, they tried to think of something that they thought would be good and not suck, and it just all seemed to suck - and then I couldn't crack it either. Judd said, 'What's the point of not trying?' and it's like, 'Well, then you come up with it!' [laughs] So until Judd comes up with it, I think it's not going to go anywhere.
At this point, it surely would be best to just leave well enough alone and keep Superbad as a special singular cinematic entity -- but it's also hard not to be excited by Greg Mottola's idea for a reunion movie. After all, the cast he put together for the first film (including those with only one line) is incredible, and it would be great to see all of them come back together.
Hopefully we'll get some legitimate news about a Superbad reunion movie at some point in the future (perhaps 10 years from now), but in the meantime you can catch Greg Mottola's Keeping Up With The Joneses in theaters now.
