In the years since Will Ferrell appeared as Buddy, the Elf in the hit Christmas movie Elf.
Elves have become extremely popular at Christmastimes. People buy the Elf on a Shelf to plant scout elves around their houses to make sure their children are behaving during the Christmas season.
Although the Elf movie, which first appeared in 2003, is a major hit movie that continues to be a Christmas classic, Will Ferrell refuses to make a sequel to the movie despite being offered a massive paycheck to do just that.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Will Ferrell explained his reasoning for turning down the sequel to Elf.
HE claimed that the script for the second movie was about the same as the first and that it regurgitated the events of the first movie and did not do anything original.
“I would have had to promote the movie from an honest place, which would’ve been, like, ‘Oh no, it’s not good.
I just couldn’t turn down that much money,’” he said. “And I thought, ‘Can I actually say those words? I don’t think I can, so I guess I can’t do the movie.’”
Ferrell was offered a whopping twenty-nine million dollars to make the Elf 2 movie.
But he felt the money was simply not worth it because the movie was not doing anything original with the movie idea.
Meanwhile, Elf was a risky movie back when it came out in 2003. Ferrell’s manager was very worried about the test screenings that were done, and although it tested well with the family audience, he was worried when the filmmakers brought in a group of college frat boys from the University of Southern California to watch the film.
Fortunately, they liked the movie as well – and most of America also liked the movie, although The Washington Post called it “the first and possibly the last Will Ferrell star vehicle.” Clearly, the publication got it wrong because Ferrell went on to star in numerous movies since he did Elf.
Ferrell followed up Elf with Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, which grossed $91 million when it was released in 2004.
In 2006, Ferrell starred in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which grossed a whopping $163 million.
The Atlantic said that Ferrell’s work in those movies was successful because his characters were “surreal satires of American arrogance [that worked] because the title characters are earnest creations — buffoons invested with the genuine belief that what they’re doing is special.”
While Ferrell was offered nearly thirty million dollars to make a sequel to Elf, he turned down the opportunity because the movie was not original enough.
Ferrell would have maybe done the movie if the scriptwriters had come up with something original, but they basically regurgitated the original movie for a second showing.
Do you think Ferrell should have made Elf 2 or was it better to stay away?