Despite opening to generally poor reviews due to its been there, done that approach to joke crafting and storytelling, The Hangover Part II still got a ton of people out to the theaters and pulled in record amounts of money. You know what that means: The Hangover Part III is now as inevitable as death and taxes. And, sure enough, THR has a report that the principal cast are negotiating as a team to get a deal for a third film in the books.
Because of Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, and Bradley Cooper’s all-for-one attitude when it comes to negotiating, getting this deal together has taken longer than usual. Their united front is allowing them to demand quite a bit of money to get a third Hangover movie made, and of course the studio has been doing whatever they can to drive that number down. They’re not really in any position of power, however, as a third Hangover is pretty much guaranteed to bring in truckloads of greenbacks, so the actors’ demands that each of them bank $15m a piece to come back and get drunk again are looking like they’re going to be met. Comparatively, each only made $1m for doing the modest budgeted original film.
In addition to all of that good financial news for the actors, there was a small bit of good news for fans of the series sitting at the bottom of the article as well. Apparently WB is keen on breaking the now familiar formula of recapping a night of blacked-out excess and plans on taking the story in a new direction. If they can get a good script together, The Hangover Part III could trump the second installment by being a success both critically and financially; and then we’ll probably be talking about how all of the actors are getting $1b dollars for Part IV. Maybe that one can have some sort of Occupy Wall Street plot line.