You generally know what to anticipate while watching an Adam Sandler film. The majority of Sandler’s films include him performing ridiculous voices, making kid-friendly jokes, and hanging out with a lot of his friends. Sure, every so often he throws us all for a loop and delivers the world a “Uncut Gems.” The amount of use one gets out of any of those factors varies greatly from person to person, but at this point, you are only responsible for yourself if you are offended by the sight of a mature guy projectile-vomiting while riding a bicycle while you are watching an Adam Sandler film.
Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in “Grown Ups,” which is Sandler’s sole live-action movie that has received a follow-up as of this writing. The idea is excellent. Sandler-esque: It centres on a group of friends who haven’t spoken in years as they reconcile after the death of their former basketball coach. They decide to meet together over the Fourth of July weekend to catch up, think about how much has changed, and engage in all kinds of mischief. The movie, which starred Chris Rock, David Spade, Kevin James, and Rob Schneider in addition to Sandler, outperformed predictions at the box office and made enough money to support a sequel: “Grown Ups 2” from 2013.
The comedians might have easily came up with a reason to appear on screen together once more. Sadly, it appears that this series will continue to be a duology, which will disappoint fans of the original two “Grown Ups” movies.
Don’t hold your breath for Grown Ups 3
It’s safe to assume that a comedy sequel will be launched soon after the original. Since two to three years are typical, and “Grown Ups 2” has been in cinemas for eight years, it doesn’t seem likely that “Grown Ups 3” will ever be made. According to Nick Swardson, who plays the bus driver Nick in the “Grown Ups” films, the studio may have been considering a threequel at one point, but as he said in an interview with “The Rich Eisen Show” in 2020, “[Adam Sandler] had talked about it and then there was another script out there that wasn’t approved.”
Not just Swardson has been kept in the dark about a possible sequel. In 2016, when promoting the horror movie “Lights Out,” Maria Bello, who plays Sally in both “Grown Ups” movies, was questioned about plans for a sequel. She explained to Flickering Myth “It has been discussed and we have heard that it might occur. However, I have no idea if a script exists or what it contains. But I certainly hope so because working with those guys is a blast.”
Six years have passed since Bello’s interview, and there hasn’t been any talk of a sequel since then. There is a method to read a third “Grown Ups” film, though, if you’re really itching for some more Sandler antics in your life.
Technically, Grown Ups 3 is out there … just not in the way you’d expect
Should you continue to watch the Swardson interview, he proceeds to talk about a “Grown Ups 3” spec script that became popular at the same time. What is he specifically referring to?
Tom Scharpling, presenter of “The Best Show” and television writer-producer, shared a spec treatment for a potential “Grown Ups 3” on Twitter in January 2020. The script was styled as a standard Adam Sandler comedy. Although the plot first reads as expected, a director yells “cut!” and it becomes clear that the players (Sandler and the gang) are merely playing characters. As they continue to play exaggerated versions of themselves, a killer escapes and begins to kill them one by one. Amazingly, while having a murderer at its centre, the spec script manages to have the same lighthearted Sandler comedy vibe.
The spec movie gained so much traction online that Scharpling was asked about it by Vulture. In the interview, he talked about how his screenplay captures the emotional sorrow of the “Grown Ups” mythology. Scharpling continued, “It’s a ‘Grown Ups’ movie that transforms into a behind-the-scenes movie, a horror picture, and then becomes this kind of meditation on ageing and the inevitable irrelevance that occurs to everyone. “If you simply hang around, you eventually lose. Show business consistently defeats all competitors.”
Overall, “Grown Ups 3” is a great meta-humor exercise, but it’s definitely too far-fetched to ever be produced. Still, one can dream.
