Our long national wait for a Dodgeball sequel may soon be over

Dodgeball is one of those weird in-between movies, where it seems kind of weak in comparison to Zoolander or Anchorman (both getting sequels by the way) or Wedding Crashers back in the heyday of Stiller/Vaughn/Wilson brothers comedies, but compared to pretty much any movie Vince Vaughn made after 2005, it’s like a unicorn that poops money. And that must be good enough for Fox, because they’ve announced production on a Dodgeball sequel. No word yet on who’s directing, but if it’s Ben Stiller, I’d be a little more interested (Rawson Michael Thurber directed the first).

Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Films has set Clay Tarver to write the script for a follow-up to the hit 2004 comedy.
Fox and Red Hour are up for another round of dodgeball.
The studio and the production company run by Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld have tapped Clay Tarver to pen a script for a long-talked-about sequel to the hit comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.
While Fox, Vaughn and Stiller have long mulled the idea of a sequel, little action had been taken. It was even a joke on an episode of Ricky Gervais’ Extras in which Stiller guest-starred.
Now the sequel will focus on Vaughn and Stiller forced to team up to fight an even bigger threat, according to sources.
Tarver co-wrote with J.J. Abrams the 2001 thriller Joy Ride but has spent much of his time in the comedy world and has a familiarity with niche, subculture activities.
He is working on Quantum Hoops, which centers on a nerdy basketball team at Caltech, set up Disney and also being produced by Red Hour. He wrote Men Making Music, about the world of competitive barbershop quartets, also at Disney and being produced by Abrams. And he worked with Mike Judge on Meat in the Freezer, a satire about hunting for HBO Films. [THR]

He’s great at writing niche subculture movies, though it doesn’t seem to matter what that subculture is. He just has a great sense of group, I guess. That’s the thing about a subculture, you throw in a fat guy, a funny ethnic guy, and a wisecracking lead, and you’ve got yourself a chuckle party, it doesn’t matter if they’re playing quidditch or planning jihad. In any case, I’ll continue to be underwhelmed by this news until they announce that the plot will focus on Rip Torn’s character. Of course, I say that about everything.

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