The 2006 comedy “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” was one of the biggest comedies of the 2000s and featured Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and Sacha Baron Cohen at arguably the highest points in their careers.
So, in an age where it seems like all Hollywood does is churn out sequel after sequel — with an occasional prequel thrown into the mix to liven things up — how did “Talladega Nights” not get that treatment?
Well, in a new interview, the film’s director, Adam McKay, says there were plans for it.
And, in all honesty, it was probably for the best that it didn’t happen.
While talking to Business Insider about the movie’s 20th anniversary, it was mentioned that there were some plans for a sequel, and a treatment had been written.
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“We did have an idea for (a sequel to) ‘Talladega Nights,'” he 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.”
Alright, I’m going to go ahead and say it was smart not to do this.
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Sure, I love F1, and the fish-out-of-water situations would get some laughs, but this would pretty much just be flipping the original movie.
I think it’s better not to make a sequel than to do a lazy one that’s pretty much the same, except it’s in Europe. The only worse ideas are sending characters into space or making them join the army.
But it got worse: McKay, as he is wont to do, wanted to get political.
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I don’t really care that the point would be to make Ricky Bobby, a southerner, look like a slack-jawed yokel because he thinks nationalized healthcare feels communist to him; I care that they seriously thought it was a good idea for a comedy film with race cars in it to tackle the topic of healthcare.
Who would want that?!
Imagine going to see the new “Jackass” movie, and before Steve-O rides a rocket-powered Port-a-John into a lake, he turns to the camera and says, “Hey, dudes, I just want to take a second to talk about food insecurity in marginalized communities.”
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Everyone in the theater would be screaming, “Now is not the time, Steve-O!”
While McKay and Ferrell’s creative partnership has since broken up, the director said the real reason the movie was never made was because of how hard it is to shoot a movie with race cars.
“The only reason we didn’t do it was it’s a lot of work to shoot race car stuff,” he said.
Well, as I said, maybe it was for the best that it didn’t happen.
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