The 2008 comedy Pineapple Express was a hit with audiences and a box office success, earning over $100 million worldwide so it had all the ingredients for a sequel and it was about to all happen — until it didn’t. Seth Rogen, who starred in and co-wrote the comedy alongside Evan Goldberg, was recently a guest on The Howard Stern Show and explained why we never saw a follow-up stoner adventure with Dale and Saul
“We tried to make one,” Rogen told Stern. “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.”
Rogen goes on to say that Pineapple Express is in the “weed genre” of movies which is a difficult one to navigate — especially if it is a weed action movie. He said that people that they were crazy for making the movie and with a budget of a little over $25 million, no one really got paid anything. Even though the box office return was huge, Sony still opted not to do the sequel to the David Gordon Green-directed pic.
“I think we probably wanted too much money,” laughed Rogen. “Studios… they don’t like giving away money.”
According to The Daily Beast, there were leaked emails in 2014 between producer Judd Apatow and then co-chairman of Sony Amy Pascal discussing the sequel. While Apatow wanted $50 million for a budget, executives insisted that $45 million was enough. As a result, the sequel never lit up — so to speak.
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