Will Anchorman 3 Happen? Here’s What Will Ferrell Says

Anchorman 2 cast

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy could have remained a one-off comedy movie about a group of buffoonish newscasters, but nearly a decade after its release, Will Ferrell and the gang returned for Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. Four years have passed since that sequel came out, and occasionally the question of whether or not there will be an Anchorman 3 still comes up. When the query was brought up to Ron Burgundy himself, Will Ferrell, recently, the actor said that while a threequel isn't in the works of right now, it hasn't been ruled out entirely. Ferrell said:

Never say never. At the same time, that's what's really fun about those characters --- it could be 10 years from now and we can still play those guys and just be older... and even dumber. So that's the beauty of that. There are no imminent plans to return to that as of yet, because, I can't speak for [director] Adam [McKay], but for myself, we still have a lot of other original ideas that we'd like to do.

Nine years passed between the first and second Anchorman movies being released, so as Will Ferrell pointed out in his interview with EW, he, Paul Rudd, Christina Applegate, David Koechner and Steve Carell could return after yet another decade to reprise their roles in Anchorman 3. They can stay in the news business for many more years, and looking specifically at Ron Burgundy, Brian Fantana, Champ Kind and Brick Tamland, there's no age limit on stupidity. That being said, Will Ferrell would also like to work on other original ideas first, be it with director Adam McKay or another partner. So don't discount Anchorman 3 ever being made, but also don't expect it to be officially ready to go in the near future.

As for what Anchorman 3 would be about, some of the ideas Adam McKay tossed around last year was the "rise of new media" and embedding Ron Burgundy in the Iraq War. Anchorman 2 only took place six years after its predecessor, whereas if McKay and Will Ferrell were to tackle one of the those two concepts, it would necessitate at least a two-decade jump. So from that perspective, it would actually make a lot of sense to wait on making Anchorman 3 and let the actors age further. One that we could count on, at least, from a third movie in this series, is the absurdity of these characters and the hilarious situations they find themselves in. Just don't expect them to go up against escaped orangutans armed with throwing stars, as was the original plan for Anchorman.

Keep checking back in with CinemaBlend about if Anchorman 3 may someday become a reality. In the meantime, you can see Will Ferrell's latest movie, The House, in theaters on June 30.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.