It was only this past summer that David Wain teased he was thinking about making a followup to the cult classic "Wet Hot American Summer." It's hard to believe that the film is now over ten years old, but the wild summer camp comedy proved to be a launching pad for a boatload of names like Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Ken Marino, Joe Lo Truglio, Amy Poehler, Judah Friedlander and many, many more. While the film fizzled at the box office, taking in a paltry $300,000, it was on DVD where the fervor for the movie grew, and where the word of mouth propelled it into must-watch status. And it looks like Wain and co-creator and longtime collaborator Michael Showalter aren't done yet.
"Yes, 100 percent yes. The whole gang, everyone's doing it," Showalter recently revealed on Bravo's "Watch What Happens Live" saying that a followup will "absolutely" happen. Of course, any further details are under wraps but Wain previously said it would be a prequel with a pretty awesome concept. "The prequel would be the same summer so they would be 20 years [too] old for the part…So it would be 40 year olds playing 16 year olds. And yeah, we're in the early stages of thinking about that," he told The Q&A podcast in June. But whether or not that idea will be used remains to be seen, and the same goes for which cast members will be reuniting.
But it seems nostalgia buffs are getting a sudden rush of movies to take them on a trip down memory lane with "Party Down" and "Arrested Development" movies in the works (and in the latter, a new series as well). This is all well and good, but let's just hope everyone can recreate the magic that all these things so fresh and funny the first time out.
Never got the appeal of the original. Paul Rudd is ten kinds of awesome but aside from him it's uneven as hell. Not a bad movie by any means but the fact that it has developed a rapid cult is confounding.