Even though the movie was released over a decade ago, every now and then talk of a sequel to 2008 stoner comedy Pineapple Express resurfaces. Just a couple of months ago, producer Judd Apatow said he had an amazing idea for a follow-up but didn’t think it would ever happen, and based on how busy the movie’s major players are these days, he’s probably right.
Star and co-writer Seth Rogen always seems to have something on the go with creative partner Evan Goldberg, with the two having recently moved into directing as well as acting as executive producers on numerous TV shows including Preacher, Future Man and Amazon’s smash hit superhero satire The Boys.
James Franco, meanwhile, might have scaled back his output over the last couple of years, but he still finds time to act, direct, write scripts and novels, produce and even paint, while director David Gordon Green and Danny McBride have their hands pretty full with the Halloween franchise and HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones.
That hasn’t stopped fans from constantly asking if there’s any chance of a Pineapple Express sequel eventually seeing the light of day though and in a recent interview, Seth Rogen explained why it hasn’t happened, with studio politics unsurprisingly being named as a huge factor.
“We tried to make one. Thanks to the Sony hack, you can actually find the email when Sony decided to kill the movie and not make it. It was something we were very open to several years ago, but Sony was not that interested in it. I think we probably wanted too much money. Studios, they don’t like giving away money.”
Pineapple Express was a solid hit when it first hit theaters after earning over $100 million at the box office on a $26 million budget before going on to establish itself as a cult favorite stoner comedy, but it looks like the closest we’ll get to a sequel will remain the meta scene from This is the End where Rogen and Franco make their own homemade version to pass some time during the apocalypse.