A sequel to the mockumentary ‘This is Spinal Tap’ (1984) with the original director and cast is already in the works. ‘Spinal Tap II’ Will Have Rob Reiner Returning As A Filmmaker On And Off Screen along with the inseparable Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest. The film will be released in 2024, on the 40th anniversary of the 1984 original.
an unexpected return
The director of ‘Misery’ (1990) stated in The Guardian:
“I can tell you that hardly a day goes by without someone telling me, why don’t you do another one? For so many years, we said, ‘nah’. It wasn’t until we came up with the right idea of how to deal with it. You don’t want to just do it for the sake of doing it. You want to honor the former and take it a little further with the story.”
The plot of ‘Spinal Tap II’ will focus on the death of the manager of the fictional British band and his wife, who later inherits a contract that requires them to do one last concert. They harbor bad memories and anger towards the filmmaker played by Reiner, Martin “Marty” Di Bergi, who they think he did a great job with the original documentary, but returns to film his last hurray. The original film was not an initial commercial success, and later found an audience in the VHS market until it became a cult movie.
The original will screen at this year’s Cannes film festival, and Reiner recalls the confusion at its premiere:
“The first time we screened it in Dallas, they didn’t know what the hell it was. People came up to me and said, I don’t understand why you would make a movie about a band that no one has ever heard of and it’s so bad. Why do you do it? I said, it’s satire and I’d explain it, but it took a while for people to catch on. Now, it’s on the National Film Registry.”