Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest are once again rocking on in Rob Reiner's sequel 'Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.'
The parody rock band made up of Christopher Guest’s Nigel Tufnel, Michael McKean’s David St. Hubbins and Harry Shearer’s Derek Smalls has reunited for, as “initially no one understood the film but over the years it grew.
” But for many years doing a follow-up wasn’t an option as the foursome didn’t have control of the project’s rights — until Shearer filed a suit in 2016 to try to regain the rights “because we never made any money,” Reiner explained. “After all of those years with DVD and video and foreign sales and Blu-ray, nothing. So once we got the rights back we said, ‘Do we really want to do this?'”'Spinal Tap' Director Rob Reiner on Controversial Sabrina Carpenter Album Cover: "It's Life Imitating Art" “At first we said no, but then we came up with an idea that came out of something very real, which is the three guys had not played in 15 years. So we thought wait a minute, why? Are they angry with each other, is there bad blood, are they not talking to each other? That became the basis of the film,” he continued. “And we wanted to make sure that the film could stand on its own, that if you didn’t see the first one, this still works on its own.” Shearer admitted that after the comedy “achieved kind of this weird cult status,” he had “pretty serious doubts about touching something that had this great reputation and maybe tarnishing it. So I had to get over those doubts — but a couple of days of hard drinking and I was fine.”made, “we went to all of the major studios and they looked at the demo we made and you’ve never seen more bewildered faces in your life. We kept saying that this is a story that’s known to everybody;has told this story over and over again, we’re just telling a funnier version of it and people will get it. And we almost didn’t get to make it.” Thankfully they did, coining expressions like “up to 11” — “I don’t think a day goes by where I don’t hear that phrase,” Reiner said — and launching the mockumentary genre.features cameos from Paul McCartney, Elton John and Garth Brooks, all of whom jumped at the chance to play, and improvise, alongside Spinal Tap. “Every musician that I ever encountered said, ‘I have a Spinal Tap moment’ and they’ll tell me about what they did,” Reiner noted. “When I first met Sting, this was years ago, he said ‘I’ve seen the film over and over — every time I look at it I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’ So it cuts both ways, people love it and they’re also like, ‘Oh that’s close to the bone.'”John Connors’ Oldenburg-Bound ‘Crazy Love’ Keeps Up a Fantastic Run of Form for Irish Cinema: “We Hit Above Our Weight”Erin Lassner. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. // This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the GoogleThe Hollywood Reporter is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2025 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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