NEED TO KNOW
Rob Reiner may be debuting a sequel to 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap, but the Academy Award-winning filmmaker is not interested in revisiting his rom-com classic When Harry Met Sally.
“No, I never wanted to do sequels. I don’t like them,” Reiner, 78, tells PEOPLE, when asked if he would ever make a sequel to his 1989 movie, as he discussed his new mockumentary Spinal Tap II: The End Continues on Tuesday, Sept. 9.
“To me, this is more of a ‘Let’s see where they are now,’ than it is a sequel,” Reiner says of Spinal Tap II, which re-engages with the famous fictional rock band more than four decades after the original movie was released. “What kind of sequel do you have 41 years after the first? ‘Oh, we’re trading on it.’ It’s not that, like I said, it’s got to be a standalone. No, I don’t usually think of that.”
“I try to figure out where is my mind at that point, and can I find a way to push my own mind and sensibility into whatever it is I’m trying to do,” he adds. “If I can figure out how to do that, I’ll make a film.”
When Harry Met Sally starred Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as two college graduates who meet when they carpool from Chicago to New York City together after graduating college. The movie, considered one of the best romantic comedies ever, follows their friendship as it evolves over the years and eventually turns romantic.
The Legacy Collection/THA/Shutterstock
“I have one idea that I might try, but you have to enjoy the process,” Reiner says of further potential sequels he may make after Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, which sees the filmmaker reunite with stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer.
Earlier in the interview, Reiner told PEOPLE that he also “never intended to do a sequel” to Spinal Tap despite the movie’s significant place in pop culture history. That changed, Reiner says, after Shearer, 81, led an effort to regain the rights to the franchise that culminated in a settlement with StudioCanal and its parent company made in 2020, per The Hollywood Reporter. “The four of us, who had shared 40% of the profits, made, I’m not exaggerating — it sounds like a joke — we made 82 cents apiece,” Reiner says.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Dia Dipasupil/Getty
After getting the rights to the movie back, Reiner says he was still hesitant to make a sequel because the original had “become kind of this classic” until the group settled on the notion that Spinal Tap “hadn’t played together in 15 years.”
“We thought, wait a minute, what is this? Is there bad blood? Are they not speaking to each other? That became the basis for this idea. It wasn’t until we had an idea that we thought, ‘Oh, this can stand on its own.’ Even if you haven’t seen the first one, this film will stand on its own. It’s about an aging rock band who has to do one more concert, and what happens.”
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is in theaters now.
