If somebody reading this has a few extra million bucks to spare, they should consider giving Jonathan Levine a call. The director behind 50/50, The Night Before, and Snatched wants to revisit the struggling characters from his excellent coming-of-age film, The Wackness. Almost a decade after the movie went overlooked in theaters, Levine wants to explore New York City again with Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) and Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley).
Below, Levin discusses The Wackness sequel he wants to make.
The $ 6 million dollar indie didn’t make half of its budget at the box-office back in 2008. Considering it wasn’t a success in theaters, a sequel might have the odds stacked against it. While discussing the idea for the sequel with LRM, Levine said, “I know I could probably get money for it, but it feels more likely to be in a Netflix/Amazon thing then as an indie movie.”
When we spoke with the Snatched director, he told us why he’s now interested in making a sequel to The Wackness:
I started thinking about it six months ago. I have no idea why I started thinking about it. Actually, you know what’s really great about that sort of canvas? You can do all this sort of crazy stuff, like when he’s doing the Billie Jean thing. You can just have fun with it. I thought about what that character is facing now and all the sort of existential dilemmas both of them would be facing. I just came up with this cool plot, but I’m not sure anyone would ever want to see it or give me money to make it.
What I would really want to do is set it in present day, which would be a little tricky because the first one took place 14 years before it came out. That’s the real trick. There’s so much I want to say about New York City politics and the existential dilemmas of these guys as they progress and get older. I have it all beat out. I’ll write it if it’s good.
Fans of The Wackness likely wouldn’t care too much if Dr. Squires showed up in present day looking like the same old Dr. Squires. They’d probably care more about what the good doctor, Shapiro, and Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby) have been up to since the pivotal summer of 1994. They’d also probably just be happy to see everybody, especially Kingsley, back as these characters.
Here’s the not-so-great trailer for The Wackness:
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