#McLovin Actor Thinks Superbad 2 Needs Female Leads

Some people say the days of small-budget comedy movies have passed, swept up in an endless stream of big-budget franchises. One of the last low-budget comedies to garner an explosively large following was 2007’s Superbad, directed by Greg Mottola and produced by Judd Apatow. Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who played the iconic role of McLovin in the movie, spoke in a recent interview about the possibility of a sequel/reboot of Superbad, which would have to be female-centered.

“I’ve heard from some of the people who made the first one, and I don’t think they want to touch it. I think they kind of like where it’s sitting. And, sometimes if you make a sequel to things, it can kind of damper the first one. I think they just want to let it be…If there was a way to do it, [a female version] would be the way, for sure.”

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“The same franchise, but starring females” has not been a particularly effective formula in Hollywood thus far. The female-led reboot of Ghostbusters was not very well received, and the female-led Ocean’s 8 grossed less money than previous movies in the series. Still, with something like Superbad, centered specifically around the experiences of teens, a female-centric point of view would be an interesting thing to inject into the narrative.

The truth is, while the story deserves a great deal of credit for the success of Superbad, the main draw was the ensemble cast of stars, including Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Emma Stone, and Seth Rogen. A new Superbad movie would have fans eager to catch up once again with the iconic characters played by the original actors. Unfortunately, Rogen, who also co-wrote the script for the first movie, stated last year that he has no desire to add on anything more to the first Superbad

“Honestly, I don’t think it requires improvement or anything to be built upon it. I’m unbelievably proud of it, it really holds up – people still watch it, high school kids come up to me telling me that they watched it for the first time and how they loved it. It’s worked its way into being viewed as one of the better high school movies that’s out there. I’m so terrified of subtracting from it in any way with a bad sequel or spinoff that I’d never do it. I have so few actual good accomplishments that I’m horrified to fuck with the ones I have.”

Of course, the guiding principle in Hollywood is not “Will the sequel live up to the original?” but rather “Will the sequel make more money than the original?” Somewhere down the line, a studio might throw enough money at the cast and writers of Superbad to come up with a sequel, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse could possibly return in an all female version. Until then, fans can enjoy rewatching the original film, which has managed to hold up over time, with the chemistry between the cast feeling as fresh as it did more than a decade ago. This news comes from Indiewire.

Topics: Superbad