Vince Vaughn confirmed that plans for a Wedding Crashers 2 are currently in early talks. Wedding Crashers starred Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as Jeremy Gray and John Beckwith, two divorce mediators who crash weddings to pick up women. John has a change of heart about their immature crashing when he falls for Claire Cleary, the daughter of the U.S. Treasury Secretary, played by Rachel McAdams. Eventually, Jeremy and John’s crashing exploits are exposed by Claire’s hot-headed boyfriend Sack (Bradley Cooper), forcing John to come clean to win Claire back.
Wedding Crashers was a surprise box-office success, earning $283 million and becoming the highest-grossing comedy of 2005. Not only did Vaughn and Wilson receive critical praise for their charming comedic chemistry, but the movie also set up Bradley Cooper to get cast in The Hangover. The film is retrospectively viewed as a turning point for R-rated studio comedies, which saw renewed popularity in the wake of Wedding Crashers‘ release with massive hits like The Hangover just four years later.
Rumors of a Wedding Crashers 2 have been circulating as far back as 2016. Still, Vince Vaughn officially confirmed to Entertainment Tonight that serious talks are being held among him, Wilson, and Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin. Vaughn reminisced about making the movie, noting how much fun it was to work with his co-stars and how he’d be very open to slipping back into that world. Here’s what Vaughn had to say about the potential sequel:
Owen and I and the director of Crashers have been talking for the first time seriously [about] a sequel to that movie, so there has been an idea that is pretty good. So we are talking about that in the early stages… They were fun movies to make. It’s always fun to make people laugh and go to work with people that are funny.
During a recent press junket for his new slasher comedy Freaky, Vaughn said Dobkin has a modern idea for Wedding Crashers 2 that would put a contemporary spin on the concept of wedding crashing. Vaughn has mostly steered clear of comedy over the last five years, with his prominent roles in films like Hacksaw Ridge and Dragged Across Concrete leaning more into dramatic territory. With Freaky slated for theatrical release this week, Vaughn appears more open to riskier, genre-focused projects than ever before.
However, a comedy sequel could arguably be Vaughn’s riskiest move yet, considering how some recent sequels to hit comedies over ten years old haven’t fared well critically or commercially. One need look no further than Zoolander 2, the Ben Stiller vehicle released 15 years after the original that earned overwhelmingly negative reviews and barely broke even at the box office. That being said, these recent sequels tend to be cash grabs, which Vaughn has explicitly avoided by passing on half-baked sequel ideas like Old School Dos that never came to fruition. With a good script, a game cast reprising their roles, and Dobkin back in the director’s chair, Wedding Crashers 2 could very well buck the trend of poorly received sequels if Vaughn sees enough potential in it to make it his first comedy sequel ever.
