Anchorman 2 director Adam McKay says there’s enough leftover footage to cut together an entire second version of the movie. And not just Wake Up Ron Burgundy–style additional material — a full-on alternate version of the movie. “We did so much improv on this one that we can literally replace every single joke in the movie and put in alt scenes and alt improv runs,†McKay tells Empire. “I think it would be really funny to put it in theatres for midnight showings. I know that I personally, if I loved a movie and someone told me that, like if Airplane! had been released with all-new jokes, I’d be like, ‘you’ve got to be fucking kidding me!’ I’d see it in a second,†he says.
In addition to all the alternate jokes, a lot of full scenes have been cut as well. “We shot a whole chunk for it that’s not in the movie where Brian Fantana [Paul Rudd] explained how he called the police and he called the federal government trying to find out if [crack is] legal or not and everyone hung up on him, so he assumes it’s legal,†McKay says. The movie comes out December 20, but given all this extra footage and a possible second version, the more significant date might be when the DVD comes out.