Get ready San Diego, Kristen Wiig is heading your way. Although it hasn’t been formally announced yet, the comic actress has signed on to appear in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.

Back in December we knew that she was in consideration for a role in the film, and now it looks definite that she will be playing the wife of weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell).

We still have anywhere between a few weeks and a few months before filming starts so I expect we’ll see many more announcements like this as the time draws nearer. Remember that director Adam McKay has vowed to make the film “a murderer’s row of the best day players ever … every single one-line or three-line role [will] just be someone we just love.”

Anchorman 2 is due in theaters December 20th.

Via Deadline.

When Ron Burgundy and the Channel 4 News Team return, they may be joined by Kristen Wiig.

The Wrap is reporting that the former SNL cast member is being considered for a role in the upcoming Will Farrell sequel where she would play the love interest of Steve Carrell’s weatherman Brick Tamland. Of course, this isn’t any kind of an official casting announcement as the film is still being written, although with an announced October 2013 release date, things should be shifting into high gear soon.

In addition to Farrell and Carell, the rest of the original Anchorman cast will be returning for Anchorman: The Legend Continues including Christina Applegate, David Koechner and Paul Rudd.

Thanks to Star Wars, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues has been relegated down to the second most surprising sequel announcement of the year. (Schwarzenegger’s return to the Conan franchise squeaks in as a close third.) And now that a script is being firmed up for shooting to start next March, details about the continuing adventures of the classiest newsman in San Diego and his Action News team are starting to come out.

While speaking to The Playlist, Anchorman director and co-writer Adam McKay revealed that one thing that the film will have is some musical numbers. That’s right, musical numbers.

There will be some music in Anchorman 2 though for sure, we have some songs already written. We were going to do Anchorman 2 as a Broadway musical first, for like six months and then go shoot the movie. That was our initial idea.

McKay elaborated a bit in a way that hints that the songs might be part of more elaborate musical numbers.

The music sequences we have done — we did “Afternoon Delight” [in Anchorman], Adam Scott and his family singing “Sweet Child O’ Mine” [in Step Brothers], we did a whole song for Talladega Nights that got cut out, a big, big musical number — we always do it live on the set… And my thing is, if the actors get freaked out, don’t sweat it, we can always re-record it later. And every time we’ve done it, we end up using the live track from the recording. We’ll probably do it the same way in this. This one might have a little more movement in it, and the only problem with that is the actors get winded.

The director also confirmed that the film’s story was going to take a look at the change in how news is delivered due to the rise of the 24-hour news cycle.

I mean what is this 24 hours news, and this wall of white noise information, has it really been good for our country? The great thing when you find a point of view like that is that it doesn’t have to be preachy or didactic, it’s also funny. It’s just funny that Americans have to contend with 2000 channels, and 60 different specific news sources, and the confusion that it creates, and the junk that we get to see is hilarious. That’s what we’re always kinda looking for, what’s the point of view that’s got life to it and plays.

There’s no release date set for Anchorman 2, though I sould suspect that it won’t be until this year at this time at the earliest before we see it.

It looks as if the missing piece of the Anchorman 2 puzzle has been found. Christina applegate will be back to play newswoman and Ron Burgundy main squeeze veronica Corningstone.

It was sports reporter Champ Kind himself, David Koechner, who confirmed Applegate’s involvement, as well as the fact that the film will be set in the late `70s, right at the emergence of the 24 hour cable news networks. The news comes from a summation of a quick chat with Koechner at gossip site Perez Hilton (via Bleeding Cool).

Koechner’s comments echo director Adam McKay’s statement back in April concerning the film’s setting and how it would fuel some of the comedy.

We know these guys never deal well with change and the good thing is that there’s a big blast of change coming, according to the regular timeline. We’re going to be throwing a lot of innovation at them, and they’re not going to handle it well. It’s right when all the news started changing with the 24-hours news cycle in ’78 or ’79. All of a sudden, local news stations diversified and had Latino anchors and African-American anchors, and any time you’re talking about diversity and the Action News team, that’s always fun to deal with.

With that in mind, I would not be surprised if part of the plot would involve Veronica getting a gig with a certain Cable News Network and Ron not handling things very well when she becomes more successful and famous than him. Pure speculation, mind you, but this might be one way to connect the few dots we to connect right now.

It looks as if Will Farrell and company were not content to release just one teaser trailer last week for the upcoming Anchorman 2. Today that trailer, as well as a new one, have turned up online. Granted, the two are very similar and probably grew out of the same kind of improvisation that happened on the set of the first Anchorman film.

Personally, I think that I like the Funny Or Die trailer a bit more if only for the inclusion of noted newsman Bill Kurtis reprising his role as the narrator from the first film.

There hasn’t been a frame of footage shot and the script might not even been finished, but Paramount has already prepared a teaser trailer for Will Farrell’s much anticipated sequel to Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy and it will premier in theaters tomorrow attached to the front of the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy The Dictator.

San Diego’s favorite news anchor himself took to Twitter to make the announcement-

The tweet also included a link to a new picture of Burgundy, who, let’s face, is still looking classy.

In addition to Will Farrell returning for the film, it has already been confirmed that Steve Carell, Paul Rudd and David Koechner will all be back to play the rest of Ron’s Channel 4 news team cohorts. Filming should be getting underway relatively soon and while there is no official release date announced, I would expect it sometime next year.

In a new interview with Britain’s Empire magazine, Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy director and co-writer Adam McKay admitted that the script for the recently announced sequel is not much more than “five pages of story notes and chunks of story.” Not much there, but there is apparently enough to supply McKay with a tidbit or two to dish out.

We know these guys never deal well with change and the good thing is that there’s a big blast of change coming, according to the regular timeline. We’re going to be throwing a lot of innovation at them, and they’re not going to handle it well. It’s right when all the news started changing with the 24-hours news cycle in ’78 or ’79. All of a sudden, local news stations diversified and had Latino anchors and African-American anchors, and any time you’re talking about diversity and the Action News team, that’s always fun to deal with.

It certainly sounds as if they are heading in the right direction, and have a good handle on what really drove the comedy of the first film. McKay went on to state that he and Anchorman star and co-writer Will Farrell will be working on the script over the next three months and that they are already planning on having another epic gang fight between San Diego’s rival news teams. I don’t know about you but this movie can’t get here fast enough.

Now that the initial wave of joy over Paramount’s surprise decision to move forward with a sequel to Will Farrell’s 2004 comedy Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy has settled somewhat, I have found myself wondering how they were going to be able to continue the story of San Diego’s most prominent newscaster.

Adam McKay, the director of the first film, has offered up two hints as to what that answer may be. In an interview with Salon he detailed the process of how Paramount changed their mind on doing a sequel (“a movie had fallen through for them, their view on it had kind of changed and that was it.”) and gave away two crumbs of information about the screenplay her is developing with Farrell -

I don’t want to give away too much, but I’ll just give a couple pieces of ideas that we’ve kicked around. Keep in mind we’re still writing the story, but I’ll say one phrase for you: custody battle. I’ll give you that. I’ll give you one other one: bowling for dollars.

I would guess that “custody battle” would imply that we will see the love of Ron’s life, Veronica Cartwright, making a return for the new movie. But as for “bowling for dollars,” I’m at a loss. But I can’t wait to find out.

By the beard of Zeus!

The story just broke a few minutes ago over at Deadline, but the Hollywood gossip site is stating that a deal came together today greenlighting the long hoped for (by me at least) sequel to Will Farrell’s 2004 comedy Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy. Reportedly, Ferrell will be joined by at least castmates Steve Carell and Paul Rudd and director/screenwriter Adam McKay. There are no other details as of yet, though I expect that we should get them when Paramount officially announces the project in the next couple of days.

Ferrell confirmed the news during the taping of this evening’s Conan.

Ferrell has been trying to get an Anchorman sequel off the ground for several years and it looked like it was actually dead last May. But I guess you just can’t keep a good local anchor down.

Will Ferrell would like to make a sequel to his comedy Anchorman. Fans would like to see Will Ferrell make a sequel to Anchorman. It seems that the only people who don’t want to see a sequel to Anchorman made are executives at Paramount Pictures. And that makes them, according to Ferrell, “idiots.”

Doing the rounds for his upcoming comedy Everything Must Go, Farrell confirmed that the studio had decided that they didn’t want to proceed with Anchorman 2 based on some number-crunching and that it may be up to the fans to prove them wrong.

Anchorman 2, you really have to assert some sort of email hate campaign to Paramount Pictures. They’ve told us, ‘We’ve run the numbers and it’s not a good fit.’

Usually in Hollywood, a film that makes $90 million at the domestic box office against a $25 million budget would be considered a hit with a sequel being under consideration. And the film’s audience has only continued to grow as it became a steady seller on home video.

Ferrell went on to explain that the project would have started as a Broadway musical that would then be adapted into a film.

We were going to do almost a reverse… almost like how the Marx brothers used to do – we were going to do a Broadway musical and then have a film come out after the stage show. Everyone we tell the idea loves it, except for the studio that owns the rights. Ball’s in their courts, but they’re being idiots.

Sadly, this is the state of affairs that we’ve known about for almost exactly a year. Anchorman 2 remains a dead project, fans remain disappointed and, as Farrell points out, Paramount executives remain “idiots.”

Via CinemaBlend.