Over forty years after This Is Spinal Tap first hit theaters, the iconic rockers are finally returning with Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, set to debut later this year. Director Rob Reiner, who also reprises his role as documentary filmmaker Martin “Marty” Di Bergi, had long resisted revisiting the band, but what changed his mind? Surprisingly, it was Netflix’s Stranger Things and Kate Bush that helped kick-start the journey back to eleven with Spinal Tap II.
“We remembered that Kate Bush had had a song put up on Stranger Things,” Reiner told Entertainment Weekly. “And all of a sudden, there’s this resurgence for Kate Bush. We thought, ‘Ah, that’s what it is.‘” This gave Reiner an idea as to how to get the group back together. “We got to get some rockstar to sing one of their songs, like joking around at a soundcheck and somebody captures it on iPhone, puts it up on, puts it up on TikTok, it goes viral, and all of a sudden, ‘Hey, Spinal Tap. So that became the basis of what we did.“
The road to the sequel also started with a lawsuit Harry Shearer filed against the studio. “But Harry Shearer, God love him. He was really upset that over the years he’d been on video and DVDs and foreign sales, and we made nothing,” Reiner said. “We never got a cent. I mean, literally, I’m not exaggerating. It sounds like a joke. We each got 82 cents to split 40 percent of the profits. And Harry said, ‘I think that’s creative counting taken a little bit too far.’ And so he sued to get the rights back.” The lawsuit was eventually successful, and the group began thinking of a potential sequel.
“We thought, well, should we do some kind of a sequel? And we said, nah, we’ve done it. We’ve done it,” Reiner said. “And then we started thinking about it. We met a few times and [discussed] a couple of things.“
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues will reunite Michael McKean as David St. Hubbins, Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel, and Harry Shearer as Derek Smalls, but will it live up to the original? Even Reiner isn’t sure. “Listen, you hit on exactly our trepidation or exactly our fear. It’s a high bar, and I’m not here to say that we surpassed that,” he said. “I mean, there’s a reason why Timeout Magazine rated it as the number one comedy of all time. So you can’t go better than that. But this one does. It works, it satisfies it, and it works…. Listen, the purists are going to say, ‘Hey, shut your mouth. Get out of here.’ But it works. It does work.” The sequel is slated to be released on September 12. In the meantime, the original classic is being re-released in 4K this weekend. Buy your tickets HERE.
