I fell on Mike White during Edgar Wright’s The Wright Stuff film festival at the New Beverly Theater last year. I was sort of drunk and had to pee during Raising Arizona; trying to extricate myself from my row I ended up right in Mike’s lap. He wasn’t pleased.
So if you see Jack Black’s character engage in that sort of buffoonery in School of Rock 2, know that it came from me. And yes, I said School of Rock 2 – while at a panel at the LA Film Festival, Mike White revealed that he has in fact written a script for a sequel, and that it made him weep. “I actually just completed a draft of what’s potentially the sequel, and I’m still, like, crying as I’m writing the script,” he said. “I try to come at it from a personal place—”
White wouldn’t spill what the movie is about, and he’s not even sure it’ll ever get made. He did say that writing this script was easier than writing the first one, although he needed to have a place to start that meant something. “So with this, you want to have a reason to go to the well again. You want it to not just be a reason so people can cash in. But at least now I have a better sense of what it was we created — what worked and what didn’t. I can kind of reboot it.”
I have to give Mike White the benefit of the doubt – dude is very talented, and very real. Still, a sequel to School of Rock? This reeks of paying the mortgage.