Anyone familiar with director Adam McKay’s process knows that there’s always plenty of material from his films that ends up on the cutting room floor.  There are loads of alternate scenes and jokes from Step Brothers and Talladega Nights that didn’t make it into the finished films, and probably the most notable case of this improv surplus was on the 2004 comedy Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.  McKay released a feature-length DVD called Wake Up Ron Burgundy, which was essentially an alternate cut of the film comprised of an excised subplot and alternate scenes;  the result was some of the funniest bits from the entire production.

Now it appears that McKay has a similar issue on the upcoming sequel Anchorman: The Legend Continues, as he hopes to release an alternate cut of the film in theaters made up entirely out of different and alternate jokes.  Hit the jump for more.

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Image via Paramount

Speaking with Empire, McKay revealed that the current cut of the Anchorman sequel runs one hour and 53 minutes long (the longest film McKay has made thus far), but he has a bounty of extra material that he’d like to put to good use:

“We did so much improv on this one that we can literally replace every single joke in the movie and put in alt scenes and alt improv runs. I think the editor’s working on it right now, with 250 new jokes. I think it would be really funny to put it in theatres for midnight showings. I know that I personally, if I loved a movie and someone told me that, like if Airplane! had been released with all-new jokes, I’d be like, ‘you’ve got to be fucking kidding me!’ I’d see it in a second.”

I know plenty of people (myself included) who would be thrilled to see an alternate cut of the film in theaters, so here’s hoping Paramount gets onboard with this idea.  At the very least, they have to include this thing on the Blu-ray.  Anchorman: The Legend Continues opens in theaters on December 20th.

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