Who says a 'Bosses' sequel has to be horrible?
BEVERLY HILLS — There's one job on tap today for Charlie Day and his co-workers: selling a gag-stuffed sequel of a popular comedy film.
It's not a bad gig in Hollywood, where the cash rolls aplenty once a bankable affair like Horrible Bosses is born. Day plops down in a grassy corner of an interior courtyard of the Beverly Hilton hotel, but the second he opens his mouth, a terrible din from a nearby construction project interrupts.
"That's my personal thunder machine that I bring with me," Day cracks. "Me and The Rock have one."
Day, Jason Bateman and Jason Sudeikis are hoping that lightning strikes twice with Horrible Bosses 2 (in theaters Wednesday), a sequel to their 2011 film, which grossed more than $117 million domestically, according to Box Office Mojo, catching nearly everyone by surprise.
By Hollywood standards, a sequel was inevitable.
"You're kind of allowed to be terrible in sequels, right? We didn't want to go down that hole," says Bateman. "The three of us had a long phone call before we signed on to figure out if we really wanted to do this based on what we thought the odds were on making it as good, if not better, than the first, because that's what we wanted to do."
This time, Nick (Bateman), Dale (Day) and Kurt (Sudeikis) are the bosses — or trying to be, with a half-baked plan to launch a start-up. All they need is some quick cash from the right backer.
Cue two additions to the cast: Horrible 2 welcomes Christoph Waltz ("That was pretty cool," says Bateman of the hire), who plays a wealthy investor interested in the trio's invention, the so-called shampoo-squirting Shower Buddy. Waltz's character brings his slick son (Chris Pine) in on the deal.
Despite the star power — Jennifer Aniston is back as Day's ex-boss and wielding as dirty a mind as ever — this cast is aware of the possible pitfalls. The film has stiff competition this Thanksgiving week, and with a sequel, "everyone's coming at you with the expectation that it's not going to be as good as the first," says Day. "I think they nailed it."
It had to have taken guts to pitch Waltz, who won an Oscar for playing a Nazi in 2009'sInglourious Basterds and appears in the Oscar-bait film Big Eyes (Dec. 25) with Amy Adams.
Waltz says he was a little surprised by the offer. At first, "I didn't get it," he says of the concept, but he has embraced the unexpected since his Academy Award win. That's partly because of a biography he read about legendary director John Huston, "who said, 'Why would I make the same movie twice?' " recalls Waltz. "When you consider (Huston's films) The Misfits and Annie, that's as far as the spectrum can go."
Bateman says he, Sudeikis and Day put sweat equity into making sure Horrible 2 lived up to the original. "We're all really proud of the first one, excited that we were part of something that did so well," he says. "We all just agreed that we would do much more than we were expected to or being paid to do and really try to take care of this thing."
Let the Shower Buddy games begin.
