#Pineapple Express 2 Almost Happened, Here’s Why It Didn’t

“#Pineapple Express 2 Almost Happened, Here’s Why It Didn’t”

If Pineapple Express co-creator and star Seth Rogen had gotten his way, we would have already had the bleary-eyed pleasure of hanging out with him and James Franco again in Pineapple Express 2. Rogen recently explained why a sequel to the beloved stoner comedy never happened, with the idea relegated to a montage in This is the End.

“We tried to make one. Thanks to the Sony hack, you can actually find the email when Sony decided to kill the movie and not make it. It was something we were very open to several years ago, but Sony was not that interested in it.”

The “Sony hack” that Rogen mentions here refers to the series of leaked emails that made their way onto the internet back in 2014. The emails involved a conversation between producer Judd Apatow and then co-chairman of Sony Amy Pascal discussing the sequel, and detailed that while Apatow wanted a budget of $50 million, executives insisted that a $45 million should be more than enough to continue the adventures of our dopey heroes. Sadly, an agreement was never met, and the Pineapple Express sequel burnt out.

Rogen also cited the “weed genre” as being a difficult one to navigate, particularly when the movie also involves a lot of big action set pieces, and that ultimately it all came down to money. “I think we probably wanted too much money,” laughed Rogen. “Studios… they don’t like giving away money.”

Seth Rogen is not the only member of the first movie’s cast and crew that would love to make a sequel, with producer and Knocked Up director Judd Apatow recently revealing a few details for the kind of follow-up he had in mind saying, “I have an amazing idea for it and it deserves to happen, but I don’t know if it will.”

“There was so much happening with the legalization of marijuana in California and we thought there was a funny story about how they would deal with it – the pot dealer community having to handle the fact that suddenly it was legal,”” Apatow said of a potential sequel back in June.

Pineapple Express follows Dale Denton, a pot-smoking process server, and his drug dealer, Saul Silver, who find themselves running for their lives after Dale drops his stash at the spot where they witness a corrupt cop and a drug lord murder a rival gang lord. The movie was directed by David Gordon Green and written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Seth Rogen and James Franco star as Dale and Saul respectively, with the supporting cast made up of the likes of Gary Cole, Kevin Corrigan, Craig Robinson, Rosie Perez, Ken Jeong, and Danny McBride, as Saul’s duplicitous pal, Red.

The movie was a financial success, bringing in $102 million worldwide on a $26 million budget, as well as being a modest critical success. Since its release, Pineapple Express has since developed something of a cult following, making it quite baffling that a sequel has never managed to emerge from the haze.

Seth Rogen will star next in An American Pickle, which features Rogen in a dual role. After an immigrant worker falls into a vat of pickles and is brined for 100 years, he emerges in present day Brooklyn, he finds that he hasn’t aged a day. The movie is scheduled to be released on August 6, 2020, by HBO Max. This comes to us from Seth Rogen’s recent appearance on The Howard Stern Show.