2003’s holiday movie Elf is a modern classic, but despite its big success, a sequel was never made. Star Will Ferrell shares more details in a new interview on why he passed on the movie, which apparently would have paid him $29 million.
The Hollywood Reporter says a sequel was written, but Ferrell opted to pass on the project because he would have only been doing it for the money.
“I would have had to promote the movie from an honest place, which would’ve been, like, ‘Oh no, it’s not good. I just couldn’t turn down that much money.’ And I thought, ‘Can I actually say those words? I don’t think I can, so I guess I can’t do the movie,'” Ferrell explained.
Also in the interview, Ferrell recalls thinking Elf could be the end of his acting career. Running through New York in an elf costume complete with yellow tights, Ferrell recalls, “Boy, this could be the end.” He added that screentests for Elf showed a lot of promise not only with family audiences but also “USC frat boys,” suggesting it would be a wide hit.
James Caan, who plays Ferrell’s father in Elf, previously talked about how plans fell apart for the sequel due in part to a reported clash between Ferrell and director Jon Favreau.
“We were gonna do it. And I thought, ‘Oh my god, I finally got a franchise movie, I can make some money,'” Caan explained. “The director and Will didn’t get along very well. Will wanted to do it … and he didn’t want that director, and he had it in his contract. It was one of those things. It’s too bad.”
Favreau, who would go on to direct Iron Man and kick off the MCU in 2008, was not originally attached to direct Elf, and he didn’t like the sound of it from the start. For the film’s 10th anniversary in 2013, Favreau told Rolling Stone that he “wasn’t particularly interested” in the movie after reading the script, which was “much darker” than what was eventually shot.
After he re-wrote the script, Elf became a PG movie where it was previously envisioned as a PG-13 film. “He was a darker character in the script I had read originally. The character became a bit more innocent, and the world became more of a pastiche of the Rankin/Bass films. The studio [New Line] read it and agreed to make it, and that’s when I was brought on to direct,” Favreau said.
Elf was Ferrell’s first solo movie after leaving Saturday Night Live. The movie also starred Zooey Deschanel, Edward Asner, Peter Dinklage, Bob Newhart, and Mary Steenburgen.
