The R-rated ‘Anchorman 2’ alternate version hits theaters a week from Friday

Oh my god, it’s really happening. I had written this off completely, but now it’s really happening.

On February 28, Paramount will be re-releasing “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” but in what they’re calling the “Super-Sized R-Rated Version” with 763 new jokes.

We wrote about this earlier, and in the editing room for the film, Adam McKay was just starting to get excited about the possibility of putting out a totally different version of the film. One of the reasons they couldn’t do it at the same time as they had the other version in theaters is because the MPAA has a rule that you can’t have two different ratings of the same film in theaters at the same time. You can pull the film, get the new rating, then put the new one out. But they don’t want any confusion in terms of people buying tickets.

There’s a new trailer for the film to announce and to give you an idea what this alternate-universe version of the movie’s going to look like:

And there’s also a new clip from the film, which certainly feels both brand-new and familiar, which I assume will part of the weird echo effect of watching this cut.


I’m excited to check this out. I think there are very few films you could do something like this with, but it seems like a perfect experiment with this title and with this cast.

If you want to see it in theaters, you’ll have to move fast, since it’s playing a one-week exclusive run. I know I’ll do it, one way or another. I figure it deserves a different letter grade and review since I would think this is, tecchnically speaking, a different movie.

Here’s our review of the movie.

Here’s a report from our time on-set.

“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Super-Sized R-Rated Edition” is in theaters February 28, 2014.