Clone High was an animated MTV show set at a high school for teenaged clones of historical figures, like JFK, Abe Lincoln, and Gandhi, that only aired for one season between 2002 – 2003. It was probably waaay too smart to be sandwiched between reality shows about drunk meatheads puke fighting, but now that Phil Lord (on the right) and Chris Miller are Hollywood’s King Midases, who made hits out of movies about LEGOs and 21 Jump Street (consider how improbable that seemed before you knew of the actual movies), it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibilities that they’d have the juice to revisit Clone High (which they created with Bill Lawrence) if they wanted.
Lord and Miller recently spoke to Collider, and it sounds like a Clone High movie is something they want to do, it’s just a matter of figuring out how. Kind of like me with sex.
Lord: It’s also a tricky thing because we basically made a PG-13 TV series, and if you’re gonna do a movie you wonder, ‘Am I gonna have to justify the budget that it’s gonna take by trying to broaden this to a family audience, and is that gonna kill what was fun about the original thing?’ Because there’s so much blood in the original series (laughs).
Miller: And innuendo or whatever.
Lord: And JFK sex jokes. Are you going to wind up defanging it?
Miller: Are you gonna make it R? PG-13?
Lord: It’s trying to cross-reference what it’s gonna cost and what it’s gonna make.
Thankfully, the fallacy that PG and PG-13 rated films are a safer bet than R-rated ones (especially comedies) seems to be going away, now that R-rated Neighbors is making $51 million on opening weekend, while a supposedly safe bet like Blended barely managed $14m. Lord and Miller recognize this, and even reference that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg could help pave the way once again (“if Superbad doesn’t happen, I don’t think Jump Street ever happens,” Lord says) with their upcoming R-rated animated project, Sausage Party.
Miller: [Hard R-rated animated films] I think is a hole in the marketplace, because people love R-rated comedies and there’s teen boys that love all the Family Guy, Simpsons-type of shows. There’s a market there for that.
Lord: The Simpsons Movie was PG-13. It had male-frontal nudity in it.
Miller: South Park movie was R. There’s a place that people are not occupying thinking that animated has to be family always, and I don’t think that’s true. I think [Sausage Party] is gonna do great. Those guys are so funny and talented. [Collider]
Man, I want them to fill my R-rated hole so bad. Wait that came out wrong.