Anchorman's original draft was somehow even MORE crazy

Anchorman’s original draft was somehow even MORE crazy

June 19th 2017, 2:19pm

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

I'm not the biggest Will Ferrell fan, but something about ANCHORMAN just hit all the right notes like an accomplished jazz flutist. While goofy and random and ridiculous, the film somehow was able to make a cultural mark (and oft-quoted by unfunny people until BORAT came out).

But would that have always been the case? So many things had to work perfectly for that film to be the lightning in a bottle that it was (which in fact wasn't replicated in the disappointing sequel), that it could've easily gone off the rails. However, the original version just might have! Will Ferrell did an interview on the Bill Simmons podcast, where he talked about the original version of the film. Here's what he had to say:

The first version of Anchorman is basically the movie Alive, where the year is 1976, and we are flying to Philadelphia, and all the newsmen from around the country are flying in to have some big convention. Ron convinces the pilot that he knows how to fly the charter jet, and he immediately crash-lands it in the mountains. And it’s just the story of them surviving and trying to get off the mountainside. They clipped a cargo plane, and the cargo plane crashed as well, close to them, and it was carrying only boxes of orangutans and Chinese throwing stars.

So throughout the movie we’re being stalked by orangutans who are killing, one by one, the team off with throwing stars. And Veronica Corningstone keeps saying things like, ‘Guys, I know if we just head down we’ll hit civilization.’ And we keep telling her, ‘Wrong.’ She doesn’t know what we’re talking about.

I'm always fascinated by original drafts and ideas of movies, because it's like seeing the creative process in front of your eyes. From STAR WARS having the main character named Anakin and Darth Vader being the name of a random Imperial general, to a male Ripley and a tentacled monster in ALIEN, to time-traveling competing Ghostbusters with wands in the original GHOSTBUSTERS film, there's always that tantalizing "what if"? But I don't think anything is more tantalizing than Will Ferrell fighting ninja star-wielding killer apes. It's also interesting to see the tenants of what would come, like the male arrogance and female suppression of the '70s work environment, to the different sets of newsmen that would be a precursor to the classic rumble scene.