SNOW PROBLEM

The Real Reason There Has Never Been an ‘Elf’ Sequel

Andy Richter told “Obsessed: The Podcast” why multiple attempts have failed.

Andy Richter has revealed why a sequel to Will Ferrell’s hit Christmas movie Elf never materialized.

The 2003 movie was such a smash that its cultural and commercial impact still resonates more than 20 years later. As a result, Richter said a sequel would be much pricier than the original, especially because its lead star, Ferrell, and director, Jon Favreau, have since become some of Hollywood’s biggest players.

“One of the keys to why New Line loves this movie now is that they had an untested director and they had an untested star, so neither one of them got any back end,” Richter, who played one of James Caan’s character’s underlings in the movie, told Obsessed: The Podcast.

Essentially, any and all profits from the film go directly to the studio—not the artists who made it. That would not be the case for a sequel decades later.

Another reason the original movie remains solo is simple: “Too much time went by,” Richter said. Plus, sequels are risky, he added, and often reflect poorly on a series’ first installment.

“I think that people went on with their professional lives and just never got back to it,” he continued. “And now that time has passed, the movie has become so special that I think that people, rightfully so, are loath to mess with it because we all can think of movies that have been tarnished by their sequels.

“And this is so special and so perfect and so beloved,” he continued. “Why risk it?”

Elf, released in 2003, follows Buddy (Ferrell), a human raised by elves in the North Pole. Richter, a comedian known for his work as Conan O’Brien’s late-night sidekick, wrote an oral history book about the making of Elf, called Elf: Unwrapped, which came out Nov. 3.

Richter said that, even though none came to fruition, some prominent figures wrote sequel screenplays.

One of those screenwriters was Scot Armstrong, a writer known for comedies like Old School and The Hangover Part II. Armstrong helped write the screenplay for Elf but received no credit for “guild reasons and procedural reasons,” Richter said, adding that that was “a shame.”

Armstrong’s inspiration for a sequel was a throwaway line from the original movie where Buddy alludes to the angry elves of the South Pole.

“It was all about the evil South Pole elves kidnapping Santa or something like that,” Richter said about Armstrong’s screenplay.

Armstrong’s wasn’t the only Elf sequel that never made it to theaters. Elf producer Shauna Robertson was working on another movie in Europe when she received a message saying that The Edge from U2 had written a sequel script himself.

“Somebody reached out to her and said, ‘The Edge from U2 has written a sequel to Elf, and he wants to talk to you about it,’” Richter said. “It’s the weirdest story, but apparently it was fully written somewhere in the world. There is an Edge-penned Elf 2 out there.”

“I would love for that to make the light of day,” he continued. “It never happened. It’s one of those things where she’s like, ‘All right, sure, I’ll meet him,’ and then it just petered out and never happened.”

Ultimately, Richter thinks it’s a good thing that those films were never made. “I’m on the side of ‘Let it stand,’” he said. ”Just let Elf be Elf. You don’t have to use every part of the animal.”

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Dana Herrnstadt Editorial Intern, Obsessed

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