Paul Feig has opened up about the potential sequels to Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy and Ghostbusters, admitting that he has always been tempted to make one.
At the same time, Feig teased that the Melissa McCarthy led and Jason Statham stealing “Spy” is the most likely to get a follow-up, before dampening hopes that “Bridesmaids” will ever get the same treatment.
“You’re always tempted to do a sequel,” Feig admitted. “There are ones I have been tempted to do. I mean, I would love to do a ‘Spy’ sequel.”
“But at the same time, the fun of a movie is the discovery of the world and the characters. Which is why sequels are so hard to do.”
“Because coming in, you go, ‘OK, I know all that stuff now.’ It just changes the storytelling. I love origin stories, which is why I did that with ‘Ghostbusters.’”
“Because I like to come into the thing going, ‘I don’t know anything about this and I want to learn about it.’ I am actually happy that up to this point I haven’t done any sequels.”
“That said, that doesn’t mean I won’t do one. But it just has to be such a good execution of that idea in a way that changes it up from what it was.”
“People are always like, ‘We want a ‘Bridesmaids’ sequel.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s a very hard sequel to do.’”
“Because one of the reasons that movie works is that it is about a woman whose life has fallen apart and she has to pull herself together to get it back.”
“If you do a sequel you can’t have her fall apart again. Everybody wants another wedding. But you have to figure out the emotional arc.”
“Because movies only work if there is an emotional arc. You can have all these crazy, fun things. But if you don’t care about the characters and what they are going through then you don’t have a movie.”
At that point I told Feig that I would love to see Statham leading a Rick Ford “Spy” spin-off, something that the writer and director firmly agreed with.
“I am with you on that. Trust me. I want the Rick Ford movie more than anything. He’s the greatest. I love the guy so much.”
But there’s another reason Feig is resisting the temptation to make a sequel to one of his films, as the writer and director admitted that there’s still a number of other genres that he’d love to dabble in, before explaining why he loves working in genre cinema.
“I am dying to do a musical, a sci-fi epic, dying to do a western, a romantic comedy. There are so many possibilities out there. It is just so much fun.”
“What I love about genres is that you have this very distinct set of rules that have been established. So an audience goes, ‘I know what is going to be in this movie.’ So then it is still so much fun to subvert those, while still playing into them. It is my favorite thing to do.”
Feig has done just that with his latest movie “A Simple Favor,” a thriller that was inspired by his love of Alfred Hitchcock, which yet again sees him work with a big studio, this time in the form of Lionsgate.
Right at the end of our discussion I wanted to know whether or not Feig would ever be interested in making a lower budgeted, more niche film. But he insisted that, even if he did, he will always aim to make a film for as big an audience as possible.
“If I did I would still want to do it for a giant audience. Early in my career I made a little $7 million movie; actually early on I made a $35,000 movie – and no-one ever saw them.”
“They just didn’t get out there. You know, I worked on that as hard as I worked on a bigger feature. The only reason you make a movie is so that people will see it.”
“So I love working with studios because I know that the movie get seen. That said, the budget on this is the lowest budget I have had in years. We were only $25 million, which is still a lot, but for a studio movie is still pretty low.”
You can see Paul Feig’s latest work when “A Simple Favor” finally hits cinemas on September 14, while make sure to keep posted to Metro for more from my interview with the filmmaker over the coming weeks.
