“Somebody’s closer!”
“You eat pieces of sh*t for breakfast?”
“Grizzly Adams did have a beard.”
Happy Gilmore is one of Adam Sandler‘s most quotable comedies, and also among his most popular. Will he be able to do the unthinkable — make golf interesting and funny — again?
It was confirmed earlier this year that Sandler is working on a sequel to Happy Gilmore for Netflix. (Finally, Happy Gilmore and Gilmore Girls will share a home.) You would be a “jackass” not to learn everything we know about Happy Gilmore 2, including plot details and the cast.
Plot
Happy Gilmore ends with Happy (Adam Sandler) winning the Tour Championship over Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald). He not only gets a gold jacket and the girl (Julie Bowen), he also makes enough money to buy back his grandmother’s house, much to the delight of Chubbs (Carl Weathers), Abraham Lincoln, and an alligator. Where will the sequel pick the story up?
Sandler hasn’t said, but he’s confident in the idea that he and co-writer Tim Herlihy came up with. “The idea that me and my buddy Tim Herlihy had and the more we talked about it and scene to scene worked on it, it built and we feel very strong about the movie itself,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “We’re happy where it’s at and this is an exciting time for us. I don’t know how all of a sudden our brains said, ‘Let’s do that.’ It just kind of happened.”
In a separate interview on The Tonight Show, Sandler discussed the pressure that comes with making a sequel to a comedy classic. “We worked hard on the script. We didn’t want to let anybody down,” he said. “People have been asking me for a long time, ‘Do Happy Gilmore 2.’ And I was always like ‘Nah, I’ll only let you down.’… We’re really excited about it… We wrote our asses off. We’re continuing to try to make it a movie that I think you’ll like.”
Cast
So far, the only confirmed cast members are Adam Sandler, Nick Swardson (who will play Happy’s caddie), Uncut Gems co-writer and co-director Benny Safdie, and Travis Kelce. In May, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end and Taylor Swift’s boyfriend said he would do anything to appear in the sequel, because like millions of white guys in their 30s (guilty!), he watched the original a million times. “Travis has… he mentioned it, so we have a nice something for Travis,” Sandler said on The Tonight Show about Kelce’s appearance. “He’s gonna come by. He’s a very nice guy. You guys would love him in real life. What a big, handsome guy. Funny and cool as hell. He’s a stud and he’s so funny.”
It’s unclear if Julie Bowen and Christopher McDonald will reprise their roles as Virginia and Shooter McGavin, respectively, although McDonald has been in touch with Sandler.
Sadly, Happy Gilmore scene-stealers Carl Weathers, Bob Barker, and Joe Flaherty (“Jackass!”) have all passed away in the last year, but Sandler has an idea for how the sequel can pay tribute to the original cast. “I would love [current The Price is Right host] Drew Carey to be in this movie out of respect to Bob,” he said earlier this year on The Dan Patrick Show. “When we were writing stuff, Bob was alive. When we were writing stuff, Carl Weathers was alive. When we were writing stuff, Joe Flaherty was alive. It sucks, we love those guys. They were such a big part of the movie and just great people. But we’re going to get them involved somehow. They’ll be involved.”
Release Date
Happy Gilmore 2 starts filming in “a couple weeks,” so don’t expect it until 2025 or 2026.
Trailer
There’s no trailer for Happy Gilmore 2 yet, so it’s on me to pick a scene from the original film to put here instead. This is a high-pressure situation because it’s hard to pick just one. So, instead, I’ll punt and share the trailer for Sandler’s upcoming comedy special on Netflix instead. Love You (which is directed by Josh Safdie) comes to the streaming service on August 27.