Will Ferrell says the ending of his 2004 hit comedy Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy had to be changed at the last minute because of how poorly audiences reacted at a test screening.
“It was such a hard movie to get made in the first place. And when it, when it finally came around to where, oh wait, now Dreamworks wants to make it, it just felt like we were playing with the house’s money. So we’re like, okay, gosh, they’re letting us make this crazy movie,” Ferrell said on the Messy podcast hosted by his Anchorman co-star Christina Applegate and Sopranos star Jamie-Lynn Sigler.
“Let’s just do all the kind of comedy things we’ve wanted to try that other people have said, no, you can’t do that in a comedy. And we were just, we just felt like every day we’re just breaking the rules and having fun.”
But Ferrell, who starred as new anchor Ron Burgundy and co-wrote the script with director Adam McKay, says they realized later that they may have taken a few too many liberties with the movie when audiences did not resonate at all with the original ending.
“So here’s an interesting thing about Anchorman. So we put the movie together, we do our first test screening. And so you test screen your movie and it’s a score from zero to a hundred. And we were like, that seemed to play pretty great. We get the score back, it’s a 50, which is not good,” Ferrell recalled.
He continued: “That can either go one way or the other. You know, it either — there’s a panic button that’s hit, or, luckily, the studio was like, ‘let’s just, we’ll figure it out.’ And they gave us budget for reshoot and that, you know, and [producer] Judd [Apatow] really helped to be like a steady hand in that regard. And so all of that, the whole pandas and the bears, that’s all, that’s five days of a reshoot.”
Will Ferrell Explains What Happened in the Original Anchorman Ending
In the original ending, Ferrell explained, “Christina’s character is abducted by a vigilante group and taken up… they were kind of like a comedic version of Patty Hearst.”
“They’re making a political statement and she’s taken up to the observatory and we have to go — it’s an action, we have to go rescue her,” he added.
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That ending “lost the audience,” Ferrell said.
“They just didn’t like that storyline at all, the audience. We just lost the audience. And when it was the news team and all of us interacting, we would get them back.
So instead, they redid the ending entirely, making it what it is today.
“We had to basically reshoot the ending. And that was that Christina had, we were there covering the big unveiling of the Panda, baby Panda, at the San Diego Zoo, nd that we were all there covering it, and Christina has fallen into the bear pit,” Ferrell said.
Applegate corrected him: “I think I got pushed.”
Anchorman came out in 2004 and has since become a cult classic. It follows Ferrell as Burgundy, an anchorman at San Diego’s KVWN news station. But after he begins a sexual relationship with Applegate’s fellow news-anchor character Veronica Corningstone, she becomes more popular than him on air, creating a rivalry between them.The movie was followed by asequel, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, in 2013.
Ron Burgundy has become one of Ferrell’s best known characters, so much so that he recently reprised the role at Netflix’s The Roast of Tom Brady earlier this year.
Ferrell came out onto the stage in his Anchorman costume and acted in full character as Burgundy, who is characterized by his narcissistic attitude and general tone-deafness.
“My name is Ron Burgundy, I am a very big deal, but tonight is not about me,” he said, telling the adoring crowd, “I love you too.”
“We are here to honor a champion of the gridiron. A great American, a father, and a sexy man. A true Patriot… until he was not, of course: Mr. Tom Brady. Holy s—, this man is gorgeous. I’ve seen him on TV before but in person — eechiowa!” Ferrell continued as Burgundy.
“Ron, pull it together. You’re a straight man. He’s making you question your sexuality, stop looking at him. You’re here to make fun of him, not fall in love, concentrate!”
You can listen to the full Messy podcast here.
Main Image: Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy in Anchorman