Last week the news broke that Bridesmaids co-writer/star Kristen Wiig doesn’t intend on making a sequel to the film, and is instead focusing on other projects. This is a potential problem, because Bridesmaids made a lot of money, which is going to make it pretty tempting for Universal to go ahead and cobble together some sort of shoddy sequel regardless. It was my opinion that the only way this could work is if they got a great script and shifted Melissa McCarthy’s character to the lead role…but now it’s looking like that strategy probably won’t work out either.
Recently, E! confronted McCarthy about the potential sequel at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and got some pretty choice comments. At one point she tried to go the Judd Apatow route and be diplomatic by saying, “I don’t know anything about it. But I know that nobody wants to do it unless it’s great. If it is, I will show up wherever those ladies are.” That might sound like a willingness on McCarthy’s part to pick up the franchise and run with it, but I think it was more just a brush off answer meant to not limit any possibilities.
The good bit happened when she was asked more specifically about doing the sequel without Wiig involved. “God, I wouldn’t want to,” McCarthy said. “I would never want to. I think it’s a terrible idea.” If McCarthy sticks to her guns, then it sounds to me like a Bridesmaids 2 will probably happen in a direct to video format that we can all just easily ignore. Is that a bullet dodged or an even more depressing eventuality?