Yeah, poop eating is icky. All the way back to Pink Flamingoes.

'Anchorman 2' plot details emerge

Anchorman director Adam Mackay has teased details about the forthcoming sequel.

It was announced last month that the cast of the 2004 newsroom comedy were planning to reunite for a follow-up. And now Mackay, who is also returning, has revealed that Anchorman 2 is likely to revolve around a custody battle between Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) and Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) over their child.

He told Salon: "I don’t want to give away too much, but I'll just give a couple of ideas that we've kicked around. Keep in mind we’re still writing the story, but I'll say one phrase for you: custody battle. I'll give you that. I'll give you another one: bowling for dollars."

Mackay went on to remark on the growing similarities between modern-day newsreaders and the fictional 1970s anchor Burgundy. He said: "Part of what inspired the movie was just how ridiculous the news had become.

It was all ratings-driven. The people were getting better and better looking. The weather women were getting outrageously beautiful. It was all about the voice and the hair."

Ferrell made the sequel announcement in character as Burgundy during an appearance on Conan O' Brien's chat show.

Exclusive: Adam McKay On Anchorman 2

Pass the news conch, for we bring exciting tidings from the Channel Four News Team. As any fool - and Conan O'Brien viewer - knows, Anchorman 2 is coming soon, so Empire spoke to writer/director Adam McKay to extract some pungently-musked tidings on the sequel's progress.

To begin at the beginning, McKay updated us on the status of the script: "We've done about two per cent! Half a per cent? We've got five pages of story notes and chunks of story. We're holing up writing for the next three months."

So what will the sequel have in store for Ron and the team? Nothing good - at least, not if you're a luxuriously-maned, change-averse '70s sex dinosaur. "We know these guys never deal well with change," says McKay, "and the good thing is that there's a big blast of change coming, according to the regular timeline. We're going to be throwing a lot of innovation at them, and they're not going to handle it well."

So what does that sinister-sounding "regular timeline" mean for KVWN-TV? "It's right when all the news started changing with the 24-hours news cycle in '78 or '79," McKay explains. "All of a sudden, local news stations diversified and had Latino anchors and African-American anchors, and any time you're talking about diversity and the Action News team, that's always fun to deal with."

For "diversity" read "an old, old wooden ship". And for "fun" we reckon you can safely read "total bloody chaos", with McKay promising another epic gang fight ("We already have a couple of ideas for it"). Somewhere amid all that ethic diversity, it'd be nice to think, lies Arturo Mendez and a big set of nunchucks.

First Teaser Trailer for ANCHORMAN 2 Attached to Screenings of THE DICTATOR

Though principal photography for the long-awaited Anchorman 2 isn’t scheduled to begin until next February, it appears that we’ll actually get our first look at the reunited Channel 4 news team much sooner than we thought. We’ve been told by someone who caught an advanced screening of The Dictator that the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy is preceded by a brief teaser featuring the entire news team (sans Christina Applegate) talking about how excited they are to return. Huzzah!

Adam McKay, who wrote and directed Anchorman and is currently writing the sequel with Will Ferrell, did some script work on The Dictator so this move would make sense. Moreover, McKay tweeted the following earlier today:


By Odin’s beard, it appears this teaser is all but confirmed. Here’s what our source had to say about the teaser:


This is certainly exciting news. We had previously heard that Paramount was considering a release somewhere between Christmas 2013 and summer 2014, and even with the February start-date it’s entirely plausible for McKay to finish the film in time for a late 2013 release. No official casting statements have been made, but I sincerely hope they bring Applegate back. She was a great asset to the first film, and McKay previously hinted that the sequel would focus on the dawn of the 24-hour news cycle and I think Applegate could flourish with that kind of material. If you missed it, be sure to check out Matt’s editorial on what actors he thinks should join the cast for the sequel.

I’m insanely happy that Anchorman 2 is a reality, and this teaser is almost worth the price of admission for The Dictator if it doesn’t appear online beforehand. The Dictator opens in theaters on May 16th. As a refresher, here’s the first trailer for the original Anchorman:

Josh Lawson, Greg Kinnear Join ‘Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues’

House Of Lies star Josh Lawson and Greg Kinnear have joined the cast of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, the sequel that Adam McKay is currently shooting in Atlanta. The film brings back Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner and Christina Applegate, and the other newcomers are Harrison Ford, Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, Meagan Good and Dylan Baker. McKay and Ferrell wrote the script and are producing with Judd Apatow, with David Householter, Kevin Messick and Jessica Elbaum exec producing. Paramount will release the comedy December 20.

Lawson recently appeared with Ferrell in The Campaign, and Kinnear is starring in and co-exec producing the Fox pilot Rake, playing a self-destructive brilliant criminal defense lawyer in a drama that was created by Peter Duncan for an Australian series and is being exec produced by Peter Tolan and Michael Wimer.

Lawson is repped by UTA and Management 360, Kinnear by CAA.