Kenan Thompson Gives Positive Update on 'Good Burger 2'
Is a sequel to the '90s fan-favorite on the way?
Kenan Thompson is still hopeful that a Good Burger sequel will get off the ground, giving adults who grew up in the 1990s good news at the end of the weekend. The Saturday Night Live star said he and Kel Mitchell are "really close" to making Good Burger 2. The original Good Burger movie hit theaters in 1997.
"We're getting really close on Good Burger 2," Thompson told Entertainment Tonight at Bryon Allen's TheGrio Awards in Beverly Hills Sunday. "It's gonna happen, and I think it's gonna happen soon. We're gonna figure out when the pocket of time will be to shoot it, but it's gonna happen."
Thompson said the project is "closer than it's ever been" to coming to fruition. "So, I don't think anything is gonna derail it," Thompson added. He said a script has even been completed.
"We had a reading, like a little private thing just to hear the script that we've been working on, out loud... just with a couple friends and a couple people from Paramount and Nickelodeon, and it was so funny," Thompson said. He added that Mitchell "has not missed a step... It's like old slippers, and that character is just ripe for jokes. We read like, over 100 pages and laughed the whole time. It was so much fun." Thompson said the project is "on and crackin'... That's all I can say."
Thompson and Mitchell went several years without seeing one another until they reunited in 2015 for a Good Burger sketch on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Since then, the two have reunited several times, including a celebrity Double Dare episode in 2018 and during the Emmy Awards last month. In December 2018, Thompson told Andy Cohen they just needed a greenlight from executives to make a Good Burger 2.
Good Burger began as a sketch in All That before the movie opened in July 1997. The low-budget film earned mixed reviews, but it grossed $23.7 million and gained a cult following among those who grew up with All That. The movie celebrated its 25th anniversary this year.
"[It] absolutely does not feel like 25 years," Mitchell recently told PopCulture.com. "But, it is and, it's so cool that people still love it to this day. I love the fact that kids that are super, super young, and 5 years old, are having Good Burger-themed birthday parties. It's so cool that family members, like kids that watched it in the '90s, are now parents. And they can enjoy this movie with their kids. That's so cool, man. So cool."