Vince Vaughn is convinced studios want to “overthink” comedies nowadays, especially ones without an IP to fall back on.
The actor — who has appeared in iconic original films such as “Wedding Crashers,” “Old School,” and “Swingers” — explained why there is a lack of modern R-rated comedies in theaters.
“[Studios] just overthink it,” Vaughn said during First We Feast’s “Hot Ones” series. “And it’s like, it’s crazy, you get these rules, like, if you did geometry, and you said 87 degrees was a right angle, then all your answers are messed up, instead of 90 degrees. So there became some idea or concept, like, they would say something like, ‘You have to have an IP.’”
He continued, “The people in charge don’t want to get fired more so than they’re looking to do something great, so they want to kind of follow a set of rules that somehow get set in stone, that don’t really translate. But as long as they follow them, they’re not going to lose their job because they can say, ’Well, look, I crunched the numbers. I made a movie off the board game Payday, so even though the movie didn’t work, you can’t let me go, right?’”
Instead, Vaughn argued that studios are playing it safe both with established source material and watered down jokes.
“People want to laugh, people want to look at stuff that feels a little bit like it’s, you know, dangerous or pushing the envelope,” he said. “I think you’re going to see more of it in the film space sooner than later, would be my guess.”
And that could be sooner than we think, thanks to the long-rumored “Wedding Crashers” sequel that has been in development since 2016. Vaughn told Entertainment Tonight in 2020 that he was still trying to get the film made alongside original co-star Owen Wilson.
“Owen and I and the director of ‘Crashers’ have been talking for the first time seriously [about] a sequel to that movie,” Vaughn said. “So there has been an idea that is pretty good. So we are talking about that in the early stages.”
“Wedding Crashers” is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary. The 2005 film also starred Bradley Cooper, Isla Fisher, Christopher Walken, Rachel McAdams, Jane Seymour, and Will Ferrell.
Longtime Vaughn collaborator Ferrell also recently reflected on the legacy of his breakout film “Anchorman,” which also co-starred his “Old School” partner Vaughn. According to Ferrell, the comedy classic was difficult to get off the ground back in the day, too.
“[‘Anchorman’] was such a hard movie to get made in the first place and when it finally came around to when, ‘Oh wait, now Dreamworks wants to make it,’ it just felt like we were playing with the house’s money,” Ferrell said during former co-star Christina Applegate’s “Messy” podcast for the film’s 20th anniversary. “So we were like, ‘OK, gosh, they’re letting us make this crazy movie. Let’s just do all the comedy things we’ve wanted to try that other people have said, “No, you can’t do that in a comedy,”‘” Ferrell said. “We were just breaking the rules and having so much fun.”
