Last night, the Slashfilm staff got together via Second Life to brain storm strategy for something really trivial. Screenwriter, comedian and all around decent guy, Mike White, was kind enough to alert the online press that he had completed the script to School of Rock 2. Our dilemma: What could Slashfilm offer Jack Black and Mike White in order for them NOT to make this totally unneeded sequel aka “Jack Black teaches a spiky-haired kid wearing snowboard goggles on his forehead how to ‘play the skins, dude!’ part 2″?
Money was out the window. The original film grossed $80 million domestically. And our staffers did not aspire a sacrifice to Black in the form of bad tattoos. Nobody here hates or despises School of Rock like we do, say, Disaster Movie. Richard Linklater’s was a family film, a twee bro-down, that didn’t totally suck even, and if you had a bad day at work, maybe you even cried watching it. But that was 2003.
Basically, Slashfilm doesn’t want to write about another SoR or face down its inevitable barrage of “ready-to-rock tweens” happy day marketing. Please world, no more endearing kids learning about Floyd via a chalk board, playing air guitars, throwing up limp \m/s or seeing Jack Black imitate AC/DC. Rock Band and Guitar Hero are enough. Plus, the sequel already exists. It’s called The Rocker and it “rocks out” on August 1st.
Our avatars shrugged and we went our separate ways. We decided to leave the sequel’s fate in the hands of our readers. Do you guys/gals/tween + hard rock loathers want to see/read/hear about School of Rock 2 in the near future/ever? Send the talent/studio involved a quick smoke signal by voting in our poll. Thanks!
June 25th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
flawed polls are cool.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
other?
June 25th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
How ’bout School of Rock 2: The School of Death Metal! I’d pay to see 12-year olds playing Carcass.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Here’s how the sequel could be great.
The kids who Jack Black taught in the first film have grown up, their dreams and aspiration crushed by the cruel music industry. The Man has gotten them down.
Summer has turned to hard drugs and alcohol and one evening meets a pimp who talks her into turning tricks for him.
Enter Dewey, still a huge fat loser. He goes cruising for hookers and sees Summer on a street corner, and recognizes her, albeit he is unsure from where. Still, that familiarity plucks at his heartstrings and he picks her up.
Post-coital, Dewey breaks down in a haze of half memories and heroin fueled tears. He let’s slip his once glorious days a music teacher, and something clicks in the barely functioning brain festering inside Summer’s skull. She needs to take a shit.
A few weeks later though, while at a parlor getting her clit pierced she remembers who Dewey is and bursts out, still pantless, to call him on the nearest payphone. Inspired by Summer’s still zealous attitude, Dewey tried to get the original School of Rock band back together.
A new battle of the bands is looming on the horizon, and all competitors are faceless products of the emo trend, but they’re still much better than our heroes who haven’t played in ages.
Try as they might to improve, the band goes nowhere. They are, however, unaware of just how bad they are, and they therefore still play in the competition, where they are subsequently booed off stage.
In the climactic final scene, Dewey sets fire the the building in a drunken rage, not knowing Summer, with whom he has become smitten, is still inside. Tortured by his actions, he picks up a nearby guitar discarded by a running young man in women’s pants and thick eyeliner, he funnels his every emotion into what could very well be a decent song.
The End.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I would be all for it, as long as they have Mike White and Jables involved. Linklater would be the cherry on the sundae but I don’t know if he’s interested.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
School of Rock one was great but I don’t think that a sequel is needed.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
I love JB and School of Rock, but no thank you.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Yes they should. What a bias survey.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Pretty much agreeing with everyone else here - School of Rock was a lot of fun, and a sequel is totally unnecessary. Totally. Please don’t do it.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Edit -> Find /Replace
Text
With
June 25th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
filter ate my words
/film wins again.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Nah, I enjoyed the first but let it be.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Comedy movies rarely call for a sequel and SoR is definitely one of those that doesn’t need one. These type of movies are fun as stand-alones and they should be left as that.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Can we at least get a one-line synopsis before judgement is passed? Seriously. Has the film-geek community has become so cynical and jaded that it’s writing off films before they’ve even left the scriptwriter’s head?
This week we’ve already had the condeming of Tarantino and Rob Zombie’s new film without even a single frame shot…. and yet people seem to be genuinely excited about a Transformer’s sequel. I must be getting old but I’m starting to miss the gold old days when a film would come out, you’d watch it and THEN you’d talk about it.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
agreed M&Co
June 25th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
I would agree that School of Rock 2 probably never needs to happen, but I’m a bit dissapointed that it was such a bias poll. Did you think that maybe you guys would be wrong for a change and half of your viewers might like to see one? I say new poll, with at least a “maybe” involved. You know what? Now I wanna watch the Tenacious D movie. Great stuff.
If you wanna start a poll about sequels never needed to be made, start with There Will Be Blood and move on from there.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
If School of Rock 2 looks like…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hml0Nu3X0s
We will reconsider. Rectangles are great.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Haha damn, I’m s.o.l. on this one seeing as I like pro wrestling. Scorpio is one of the best black wrestlers of all time.
I just like movies with Jack Black that are about music, so even if it was a sequel I’d probably still enjoy it, but I wouldn’t cry. At least not again anyway.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Give me news, not your biased opinions.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Geez, could your poll be any more ridiculous?
Alot of people liked School of Rock. Just because Hunter “Holier-than-thou” Stevenson didn’t like it [because you're too busy trying to be an artsy-fartsy film snob], doesn’t mean you have to belittle everything about it.
I liked School of Rock. I hope they do make a sequel. And I hope Hunter stops posting. Seriously. You make me not want to read this site. Normally I completely skip your posts and read about it a different site. One not so childly biased.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
@ Frank
Note to self: In the future look out for “childly bias.”
June 25th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Also (and I don’t know if this news has yet to reach all areas of the internet yet or not), there’s one important fact here:
Nobody owns the movie except the people who own the movie (and that’s not you). If Mike White wants to write a sequel to his movie, then he can and you can’t stop him. If Producer X wants to remake a movie you consider “classic” and “sacred” and he has the technical rights to do so… guess what? You can’t stop him. He/she/they are entitled to do whatever they want with their movies, their stories, their characters, their money, and their time. You don’t own anything to do with School of Rock or Robocop or Halloween or Star Wars. So acting as if the mere fact that you disagree with some bit of news represents a great transgression against your fragile genius psyche and subsequently motivates you to attempt to rally more to your opinionated cause is a pathetic waste of time and — especially from a “I’m an against-the-mainstream-grain internet movie cynic” — rather unoriginal.
Bitching and moaning about these sorts of things just casts more attention on something you claim to despise and/or oppose (while also giving it more exposure and publicity). Now, if it was some sort of empirical mistake or logical contradiction or someone involved with a movie said one thing and then did another, that would be news for the mere fact that it was worth pointing out. But writing pieces about “me and my friends don’t like the idea of this — agree with us!” is just completely negating the purpose of a site like /Film, which is designed to educate and connect people to stories, not force-feed subjective thoughts to those who are seeking information.
A much better course of action would have been to post the news “Mike White has written a sequel to School of Rock” and then MAYBE had a poll (with enough choices to cover all possible reactions) and then asked people to respond, in the comments, as to how they felt about this news.
M&Co. made a great point: motherfuckers, you haven’t even the slightest clue as to what the movie is ABOUT (not to mention: who’s in it, who’s directing it, etc). And even once you have that information, there’s a really good chance that you STILL won’t have any idea about what the final product will resemble.
Report the NEWS (this person signed on, this movie comes out on this date, here’s a new poster, here’s some pictures, here’s a blog post from the director), fairly poll readers’ feelings about upcoming projects/people/ideas, and wait until you’ve seen a movie before writing about its quality.
Oh, and just for the record: if a movie looks SO bad to you/offends your sensibilities so much, as a film watcher… um, maybe don’t give them free publicity by posting about it on a highly-trafficked site?
June 25th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
@ Justin
Brilliant! Do you have a flying contraption you’d like to sell?
June 25th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Hang on, I’m going to poll all my friends and then determine whether or not I think selling you a flying contraption is a good idea (my money’s on “no”).
June 25th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
I though S.o.R. Part 1 was quite entertaining. But there’s no room for a sequel.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:17 am
I thought Hunter Stephenson understood the majesty of rock; the pageantry of roll. But he doesn’t even get the crowing of the cock; the running of the foal.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:24 am
Wow, Justin must be a citizen of Contradiction City.
“Their movie? They can do what they want”
Their blog? They can do what they want.
Sucks don’t it?
June 26th, 2008 at 2:47 am
The first film was probably the best film I’ve EVER SEEN but I don’t see where they could go with a sequel.
Although if White/Black/Linklater were involved, I can’t see how it could result in a bad film.
June 26th, 2008 at 3:52 am
Undoubtedly the first pointless news story ever posted on this site.
Well done Hunter - how about leaving all the writing to Peter from now on?
June 26th, 2008 at 6:47 am
I just feel sorry for the dude that spent time writing a script for this. Flush those months down the toilet. Bwoooooosh!
At Ben Franklin: Love your work man, but it’s a movie site. Its ALL pointless.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:21 am
I absolutely loved School of Rock and I’m guilty as charged for weeping at the end when they rip the stage up.
All that said, I don’t necessarily crave a sequel, but I’d still see it.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:09 am
this one had better open with jack black shooting heroin into his dick.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Man, feeling the Hunter hate this morning. You’d think he trashed
some piece of classic cinema. LoL
School of Rock was a mediocre film. I’ve seen it a couple of times, and hey, my kid finds it entertaining.
Sequel for this flick? My opinion, PLEASE NO! When is a sequel ever
a truly good idea? We’ve had some luck with comic/fantasy movies, but every other genre typically fails in their attempt to capitalize on the success of the first.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I can’t believe how many cockmongers are whining about the biased poll.
Boo-fucking-hoo. Why do you give a shit? Honestly.
If you want there to be a sequel than good for you factotum (get the joke? GET IT?), but Hunter doesn’t and he can say whatever he wants on his blog.
You’re wasting your time bitching about this shit here. It’s pointless, it’s a harmless poll meant to be funny.
Of course, School of Rock’s fanbase is pretty much pre-teens anyway, so to expect logic in their responses is lunacy.
June 28th, 2008 at 6:57 am
And this is why I love this site. High five Hunter.
July 14th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
it could work if it’s like the blues bros