It’s been 17 years since Seth Rogen and James Franco blazed up for Pineapple Express (and taking David Gordon Green out of the indie scene with them). And considering the movie made back five times its budget, it’s a surprise it never got a sequel. So will Dale and Saul meet at the crossroads one more time?
Seth Rogen recently appeared on Watch What Happens Live, where host Andy Cohen asked if there was any potential for a follow-up to Pineapple Express. “Maybe. We can probably sell it to streaming or something…There could be [a demand]. You never know. I don’t know. I’m not great with sequels. It’s not where my mind goes, but maybe one day.” That’s pretty much just a courteous way of saying, “No.”
Rogen, co-writer Evan Goldberg and producer Judd Apatow did try to get a sequel to Pineapple Express going not long after the stoner comedy hit theaters but it got halted due to a couple of reasons, the primary being with the finances, as Apatow and company wanted to nearly double the budget of the first movie. More information came about in the 2014 Sony Pictures email hack, with both Apatow and Rogen emailing Amy Pascal to share their excitement. However, one of the later emails from Doug Belgard, then-president of Sony Picture Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group, read in part, “In my heart, I don’t believe Pineapple is Austin Powers or even Anchorman; I think it’s more like This Is the End.” Interestingly enough, the closest we ever got to a Pineapple Express 2 is the fake trailer produced as part of the promotion for This Is the End.
There is also the matter of the relationship between Seth Rogen and James Franco following the sexual misconduct allegations against the latter. As it stands, it doesn’t seem likely that the two will ever mend, at least professionally. And really, at this point, Franco might have a number of projects on the horizon, but Rogen has so much more to lose.
Do you think a sequel to Pineapple Express could have worked if it was closer to 2007?
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