We're going back to Stonehenge, folks – Rob Reiner, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Scherer have announced they'll reunite for the long-awaited sequel to This Is Spinal Tap.
Spinal Tap II will be directed by Reiner, who directed the first film. He told Deadline, "The plan is to do a sequel that comes out on the 40th anniversary of the original film—and I can tell you, hardly a day goes by without someone saying, 'Why don't you do another one?' For so many years, we said, 'Nah.' It wasn't until we came up with the right idea how to do this. You don't want to just do it to do it. You want to honor the first one and push it a little further with the story."
While the screenplay is still under-development by McKean, Guest, Scherer, and Reiner, the acclaimed director provided a little insight into what we can expect from the bumbling rockers forty years down the line.
"They've played Albert Hall, played Wembley Stadium, all over the country and in Europe. They haven't spent any time together recently…. Ian Faith, who was their manager, he passed away…. Ian's widow inherited a contract that said Spinal Tap owed them one more concert. She was basically going to sue them if they didn't. All these years and a lot of bad blood we'll get into, and they're thrown back together and forced to deal with each other and play this concert."
This Is Spinal Tap will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2024. It had maintained an immensely popular cult-comedy following and spawned such genius lines as "This one goes to 11," which—if you know a musician—you've laughed together about that one many a time. This year also saw the unfortunate passing of Ric Parnell, best known as drummer Mick Shrimpton, who "died" in the film from spontaneous combustion.
