It Sure Sounds Like We're Getting a "Happy Gilmore" Sequel

The 1990s were to a strange subgenre of sports movies: films in which an athlete from one sport goes on to find even greater success in a different one. 1998’s Air Bud: Golden Receiver followed the story of a golden retriever changing sports from basketball to football. The protagonist of 1992’s The Cutting Edge leaves hockey behind after a career-ending injury only to find glory as a figure skater. And then there’s 1996’s Happy Gilmore, in which Adam Sandler plays a hockey player-turned-golfer who brings an irreverent attitude to the green.

And now, it seems that we’re getting a sequel to it. That’s the big takeaway from an article in The Hollywood Reporter by Ryan Gajewski, anyway. According to Christopher McDonald, who played the film’s antagonist Shooter McGavin, Sandler has been working on a screenplay for a sequel to the comedy — and showed McDonald a first draft of it.

McDonald made the initial comments in an interview on the radio show 92.3 The Fan. Both Sandler and McDonald have expressed interest in making a sequel in the past.

Happy Gilmore abounds with genuinely bizarre (and sometimes hilarious) moments, including a Sandler/Bob Barker brawl and Sandler presenting his coach, played by the late Carl Weathers, with the severed head of an alligator. As Jesse David Fox observed in an extensive survey of Sandler’s career for Vulture, this film was something of a watershed moment for Sandler. “[I]t wasn’t until Happy Gilmore that [Sandler] showed a wide audience the full force of the comedic trait that would go one to define him: his anger,” Fox wrote.

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In an era where sequels pop up whether or not anyone’s demanded them, a Happy Gilmore sequel sounds like it could be more interesting than most. If nothing else, seeing what that character would be like nearly 30 years later could make for some genuinely funny moments. According to The Hollywood Reporter, neither Netflix nor Sandler’s production company responded to a request for comments. For viewers looking to see Sandler play a character about as far removed from Happy Gilmore as you can get, the film Spaceman recently debuted on Netflix.