Asked to compete against the dinosaurs of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and the reunited Incredibles clan, Uncle Drew performed admirably for a summer comedy that happened to be based on a Pepsi ad campaign. Charles Stone's geezers-on-the-court basketball comedy struck a chord with NBA fans and Kyrie Irving lovers, generating $44 million in box office receipts -- with an eye toward increasing that take on home video. Could a sequel happen? If Uncle Drew 2 is greenlit, one of its co-star -- NBA superstar Chris Webber -- says the makeup process MIGHT keep him from signing on the dotted line... temporarily. We talked with the TNT basketball analyst about his time on the movie, and he told us, regarding a sequel:
I'm really happy this movie's doing well. And I think that people that are in control of that, again, it depends -- if kids, like your kids, want to see it, you know, I couldn't be selfish and not do it over a little makeup. Overall, the makeup was, you know... two percent of it was bad, 98 percent of it was wonderful. So that's not enough for it to stop me, with the people that we worked with, the production team and everyone, it was a great experience.
Did Uncle Drew make enough money, and raise enough awareness, to lead to Uncle Drew 2? Less successful movies have certainly generated sequels, and the cast involved with this comedy clearly had a lot of fun working on it together. The one hiccup is that C-Webb, Reggie Miller, Shaquille O'Neal, Lisa Leslie and Kyrie Irving had to endure hours in the makeup chair to turn themselves into senior citizens. Uncle Drew is an old man. And when he is challenged to return to the tournament of his hometown in NYC -- the famed Rucker Park -- he has to go on a trip to recruit his best squad.
Chris Webber's character, Preacher, is introduced in an important baptism scene, and the co-star told us that when we have the DVD, we need to look out for key members of his family, who he got to cameo in that scene. Webber explained:
The baby (I am baptizing) is my daughter, and my father's in that scene, and he's next to Lisa Leslie. So it was a lot of fun because I grew up in churches similar to that. And so being there and my father -- you know, his whole thing in his life is that he wanted to be able to act in a movie, so how crazy is it that they gave him the opportunity. It was a lot of fun. My nephew was an extra in that scene. It's definitely my family's favorite scene and uh, I heard from some people that it was pretty funny to them too because it was funny to me. So hopefully everybody liked that scene.
You can check out that scene, and so much more, now that Uncle Drew is available on digital as of Sept. 11, and on 4K and Blu-ray on Sept. 25.
