Vince Vaughn On Making Wedding Crashers 2
Fifteen years after the smash hit comedy Wedding Crashers was released, star Vince Vaughn is finally discussing a potential sequel.
Fifteen years ago, Wedding Crashers became a massive comedy hit, making over $288 million worldwide. Wedding Crashers is still the seventh highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all-time, surpassed by only the Deadpool films, the first two Hangover films, Beverly Hills Cop, and Ted. All of these other films either began or were part of an existing comedy franchise, so it’s kind of surprising that Wedding Crashers never had a proper follow-up. But now, Wedding Crashers star Vince Vaughn says a sequel is in the works.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Vince Vaughn said, “Owen [Wilson] and the director of Crashers [David Dobkin] have been talking for the first time seriously [about] a sequel to that movie.” Vaughn continued, “So there has been an idea that is pretty good. So we are talking about that in the early stages.”
Back in the 2000s, Vince Vaughn was a huge comedy draw. Vaughn found great success with comedies like 2003’s Old School, 2004’s DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, and 2008’s The Break-Up. But even with the success of Vaughn’s comedy career at the time, only one of Vaughn’s comedies received a sequel, 2004’s Anchorman: The Legend of Run Burgundy, in which Vaughn played rival television news anchor, Wes Mantooth.
In the last few years, Vince Vaughn has taken on darker roles. In 2015, Vaughn became one of the stars of HBO’s True Detective series. Since then, Vaughn has done a number of surprising roles, including appearances in 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge, S. Craig Zahler’s Brawl in Cell Block 99 in 2017, and Dragged Across Concrete in 2018, and this year’s directorial debut from Clark Duke, Arkansas. Vaughn will also release the body-swapping horror-comedy Freaky this weekend.
While Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson haven’t teamed up for a new Wedding Crashers film, the pair did reunite for The Internship in 2013, about two adults who begin an internship at Google. The film made $93 million worldwide against a $58 million budget and was the last time Vaughn and Wilson have worked together.
Director David Dobkin has mostly stuck with comedies since Wedding Crashers, following the film with 2007’s Mr. Woodcock and the Vince Vaughn Christmas comedy, Fred Claus. Since then, he has also made 2011’s The Change-Up, the Robert Downey Jr.-starring The Judge in 2014, and this year, Dobkin released the Netflix comedy, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.
Last month in an interview with Cinema Blend, Vince Vaughn also talked about the possibilities about a Wedding Crashers 2. “David Dobkin had a really good idea that’s contemporary. I never went and made a sequel to a lot of these films at the time because it felt like we were just chasing a success. But what I like about where Crashers could potentially be at is [that] there’s something that is of this moment that feels really good… a lot of these comedies, even something like Wedding Crashers, you’re sort of investigating things that I think are real in our lives, but the comedy is an overcommitment to the absurd.”
It’s curious to see Vince Vaughn call a potential Wedding Crashers 2 “contemporary” and “of this moment.” Considering where Weddings Crashers ended and how creepy the idea of two complete strangers lying their way into random women’s beds could be in the modern-day, it seems extremely unlikely that a sequel would continue the adventures of Owen Wilson’s John Beckwith and Vaughn’s Jeremy Grey in the way they were in the first film.
This especially seems to be true considering what David Dobkin hinted at when first discussing what a Wedding Crashers 2 could look like earlier this year. In an interview with Collider from June 2020, Dobkin said that he had turned down offers to do a sequel for years and that Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson also didn’t want to do a sequel.
But David Dobkin’s idea sounds like something that could interest both Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. “I thought about it and I’m like, ‘Well I’d be curious what it’d be like for guys in their late 40s who end up being single again and have to go back out in the world. What a weird, difficult, challenging story that is.’” At this point, Dobkin stated neither Vaughn nor Wilson had read it, but it seems pretty clear that Vaughn at least must have liked what he read.
It will also be interesting to see if David Dobkin’s idea will bring back what is an insanely stacked cast. The original Wedding Crashers ended with John and Jeremy running away with Claire and Gloria Cleary, played by Rachel McAdams and Isla Fisher, respectively. Since both John and Jeremy were divorce lawyers in the first film, maybe they are now on the receiving end of their own divorces? In addition to Fisher and McAdams, could Dobkin’s sequel also find a place for Bradley Cooper to return as Zachary ‘Sack’ Lodge?
In that Collider interview, David Dobkin continued that there was no rush for the film, and since audiences have already had to wait fifteen years for a new Wedding Crashers film, a little while longer won’t hurt. But with Dobkin’s solid idea and the possible reunion of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, it sure seems like Wedding Crashers 2 would be worth the wait.
