Vince Vaughn was aware that “Swingers” was totally money, but even then, the script for the sequel got thwarted.
Vaughn told Variety that “Swingers 2” was a possibility, with screenwriter/co-star Jon Favreau even penning a screenplay for a follow-up. However, both Vaughn and Favreau opted to not move forward after “Swingers” became a cult hit in 1996.
“I was always of the mindset of go make something new. But there was a script even for ‘Swingers 2’ that Jon wrote that was really fun, but we didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do,” the “Bad Monkey” actor said. “Obviously when you have a commercial hit, there’s always a race to get the sequel out as soon as possible, but I always felt like it had to have its own story. So, there were talks at different times.”
Vaughn pointed to his other comedy classics that almost — or still might — land sequels.
“‘The Wedding Crashers’ was something we were considering revisiting. It just never got to a story that felt right to everybody,” Vaughn said. “‘Dodgeball’ is something that we’ve been exploring a little bit lately, being a sports movie, and as time goes on, it feels like there could be a fun story to come out of that world these years later, but we’ll see if it ends up coming to fruition or not. But I always was reluctant to do it just to do it. So, it would just have to be something that felt like it worked in and of itself.”
Vaughn recalled how the production of “Swingers” proved just how “defiant” of filmmakers him and Favreau were at the time.
“Even in the making of ‘Swingers,’ the early meetings we went through used to make us laugh. They were like, ‘Can there be a girl in the group?’ And we thought, ‘Well, if there was a girl in the group, I don’t think these guys would be in the place that they’re in,’” Vaughn said. “And we were really defiant at that age to tell the story we wanted to tell, thankfully, and we weren’t trying to check a bunch of boxes. […] The thing that I think resonated was that there was a genuineness that the guys weren’t perfect. Some of the turns that happened, they would handle in a way that I think audiences could relate to because they weren’t guys that were necessarily seven steps ahead. And there was a bond of a friendship — you had guys that cared about each other and were trying to help each other as they were navigating career and dating and life. And when you’re in pursuit of stuff and dating, you’re lucky when you have good friends that are wanting what’s best for you.”
Vaughn and Favreau continued working together with “Made,” which was part of a slated “trilogy” of sorts. The third feature was supposed to be titled “The Martial Revelation,” and center on a “Hasidic Jew who was a gunfighter in the Old West,” as Vaughn explained.
“It was comedic, but it was played straight like ‘Swingers’ or ‘Made,’” Vaughn said. “It was a great script, but we never found the timing to do it.”
