Abandoned "Pineapple Express 2" Discussed by Rogen

Despite out promoting his new HBO Max feature An American Pickle (Out this Friday, August 6th, and the first original feature film for the streaming service), Rogen has taken time to discuss various past projects or his involvement others. In the same interview on SirusXM's "The Howard Stern Show" where he discussed his uncredited work as a script doctor on Dolittle (See that quote here), Rogen also delved into how a sequel was in the works for his popular 2007 film Pineapple Express. More specifically, he confirmed a report made at The Daily Beast about the reason the sequel was cancelled having to do with a budget disagreement:

“We tried to make one and 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. Weird thing.”

In the report by The Daily Beast, it was said producer Judd Apatow reportedly wanted $50 million ...nearly twice the budget of the first film which was made for a fairly conservative $27 million. It was said Sony would only offer $45 million. Whether one would agree with this budget increase or not depends on whether one believed the sequel could have outdone the $100 million box office intake of the first film. With Rogen's apparent influence in the industry now, it's seems a sequel of that budget could be likely now than back then. Who knows? Stay tuned!