David Spade says a Tommy Boy sequel was pitched to him about two years ago, but he turned it down because he couldn’t see a version of the film that works without Chris Farley.
What Spade said about the Tommy Boy 2 pitch
In an interview on Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast, Spade said the proposed sequel idea centered on the characters’ children, with Spade’s character returning to help them on a road-trip-style story. He said he rejected it because he “can’t find a scenario with no Farley,” adding that Farley “was the whole movie.”
Spade also suggested that making a follow-up decades later would feel like “too commercial,” even if the concept was built around the next generation rather than trying to directly replicate the original duo.
Why the absence of Chris Farley is the dealbreaker
Farley, Spade’s Saturday Night Live costar and Tommy Boy partner on screen, passed away on December 18, 1997, at age 33. Spade’s point was blunt: the heart of Tommy Boy was Farley’s presence, and a sequel risks feeling like it’s trading on nostalgia while missing the central ingredient.
The Tommy Boy context fans still care about
Released in 1995, Tommy Boy paired Farley and Spade as mismatched traveling salesmen trying to save the Callahan family business—an odd-couple setup that became a lasting cult favorite. Director Peter Segal has credited the film’s staying power to the one-of-a-kind chemistry between Farley and Spade, which is exactly what Spade says can’t be recreated in a sequel today.
