During an interview with The Ringer, Will Ferrell has been talking about the original plans for the 2004 cult comedy Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and it seems we could have got something very different indeed.
“The first version of Anchorman is basically the movie Alive, where the year is 1976, and we are flying to Philadelphia, and all the newsmen from around the country are flying in to have some big convention,” said Ferrell. “Ron convinces the pilot that he knows how to fly the charter jet, and he immediately crash-lands it in the mountains. And it’s just the story of them surviving and trying to get off the mountainside.”
“They clipped a cargo plane, and the cargo plane crashed as well, close to them, and it was carrying only boxes of orangutans and Chinese throwing stars,” he continued. “So throughout the movie we’re being stalked by orangutans who are killing, one by one, the team off with throwing stars. And Veronica Corningstone keeps saying things like, ‘Guys, I know if we just head down we’ll hit civilization.’ And we keep telling her, ‘Wrong.’ She doesn’t know what we’re talking about. So that was the first version of the movie.”
Would you have liked to see Ron and the KVWN Channel 4 News Team battling killer orangutans in the wilderness? Let us know your thoughts on the original story in the comments below..
Originally published June 18, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
