‘Anchorman 2′: Director Adam McKay Dishes That There Will Be Musical Numbers!
Though 'Anchorman 2' isn't due out until sometime next year, and shooting has yet to commence, the script is being worked on and writer/director Adam McKay was out promoting something else when the sequel came up. He dropped some nuggets about the film, including that it's likely to have at least one musical number.
Talking to Playlist, the biggest surprise is in the interview is that they are looking to have musical numbers of some kind in the film. As he mentions, the original plan was to work it out (as the Marx Brothers did) by staging it as a Broadway show first, and so musical numbers would keep it in line with the brothers Marx. Here's the money quote:
Whole song sequences, absolutely. The music sequences we have done — we did ‘Afternoon Delight’ [in 'Anchorman'], Adam Scott and his family singing ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ [in 'Step Brothers'], we did a whole song for ‘Talladega Nights‘ that got cut out, a big, big musical number — we always do it live on the set. And my thing is, if the actors get freaked out, don’t sweat it, we can always re-record it later. And every time we’ve done it, we end up using the live track from the recording. We’ll probably do it the same way in this. This one might have a little more movement in it, and the only problem with that is the actors get winded."
"Little more movement" suggests full blown singing and dancing. But as McKay mentions, whole chunks of subplots have been cut out of his films before, so it's possible these musical numbers could end up as home video extras. He also says of the plot:
Even thought it’s going to be a big silly movie, it’s all about the rise of the new media and 24 hour news cycle, and there’s a lot of interesting points to make about that while being silly."
He also talks about wanting to have a number of great day players, and mentions Upright Citizen Brigade's Ian Roberts and Human Giant's Rob Huebel, both of whom have appeared in previous McKay movies. But with 'Anchorman 2,' we're sure comedians big and small will come out to play with Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, and the rest of the gang.