Here’s a strange one. According to Andy Richter, U2‘s legendary guitarist, The Edge, once wrote a full sequel script to Will Ferrell’s 2003 holiday comedy Elf. What?! I know, I’m just as confused as you are.
During a recent appearance on Obsessed: The Podcast, Richter revealed that Shauna Robertson, who produced Jon Favreau’s original Christmas staple, once received an unexpected message claiming that The Edge, whose real name is David Howell Evans, had secretly penned a script for Elf 2.
“Somebody reached out to her and said, ‘The Edge from U2 has written a sequel to Elf, and he wants to talk to you about it,'” Richter recalled. “It’s the weirdest story, but apparently it was fully written. Somewhere in the world there is an Edge-penned Elf 2 out there… I would love for that to make the light of day. It never happened. It’s one of those things where she’s like, ‘All right, sure, I’ll meet him,’ and then it just petered out and never happened.”
Surprisingly, the Irish rock god isn’t the only person who tried to get Buddy the Elf back into costume. Old School and The Hangover Part II screenwriter Scot Armstrong also constructed a separate sequel script. According to Richter, that version revolved around “the evil South Pole elves kidnapping Santa or something like that.”
Still, rather than championing the greenlighting of a belated cash-grab, Richter firmly believes Hollywood should leave well enough alone and let the original stand as an unblemished holiday classic. “I’m on the side of ‘Let it stand,'” he said. “Just let Elf be Elf. You don’t have to use every part of the animal.”
I’m inclined to agree with him. Honestly, I might be one of the few people on the planet who would be perfectly content never watching Elf ever again. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is fine for what it is, but back during my retail stint at Blockbuster Video, Elf got jammed inside our store’s primary DVD player. We were left with no choice but to let it play on a continuous loop for months until corporate finally authorized a replacement unit. I’ve seen Buddy spread Christmas cheer more times than I’d care to admit, and I have zero desire to revisit it—or any Edge-crafted sequel.
Does this make me a total Scrooge? Perhaps. But I’m completely fine with that.