'Good Burger 2' Is Good To Go With Kenan Thompson And Kel Mitchell Returning
Give it a Good Shake
It's officially happening. Good Burger 2 has been greenlit, and it's coming to Paramount+. And of course, Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell are returning for this sequel to the beloved 1997 film.
Thompson, who played Dexter Reed, and Mitchell, who played Ed, confirmed the news during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, arguably the culmination of a seven and a half year journey that began with a Good Burger sketch on the very show in September 2015. The sketch went on to garner 27 million views on YouTube.
It would be the first of many televised appearances together, including on the NickRewind block, Wild n' Out, Double Dare, even the 2022 Primetime Emmy Awards. The pair would even executive produce a revival of the sketch comedy series where their careers, the Good Burger sketch, and the character of Ed originate: All That. Mitchell would play Ed 25 times over his five season tenure on the series, performing it again in the tenth anniversary special in 2005, the aforementioned 2015 sketch and then 6 more times in the 2019-2020 eleventh season. Thompson's Ed was a character original to the film, playing customers like Lester Oakes Construction Worker in the original sketches.
Most recently, the pair reunited where Thompson has been working since 2003, as the longest tenured cast member on Saturday Night Live in a sketch that revives the Nickelodeon sitcom they did together: Kenan & Kel for a pretaped sketch called "Kenan and Kelly" with episode host Keke Palmer. It ended, funnily enough, with the pair being recruited for a Nope sequel. It was a little past the halfway point between Kenan hinting that Good Burger 2 was coming on a previous Tonight Show appearances and the confirmation, who knows if that means anything.
As for the film itself, production will begin in May and premiere later this year. The premise reads "Dexter Reed is down on his luck after another one of his inventions fails. Ed welcomes Dex back to Good Burger with open arms and gives him his old job back. With a new crew working at Good Burger, Dex devises a plan to get back on his feet but unfortunately puts the fate of Good Burger at risk once again."
It will be directed by Phil Traill, who directed 25 episodes of The Middle and written and as executive produced by the writers of the original film, Kevin Kopelow & Heath Seifert, who were also major writers on All That, with additional writing from James III, who wrote with them on season 11. The director of the first film, Brian Robbins, was a producer of All That for its first ten seasons, and is now the current President and Chief Executive Officer of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon.
Truth be told, I and my colleagues at What's On Paramount+ got word of Good Burger 2 back in late December, on that content roadmap for the year which also featured Zoey 102 and the now-cancelled Workaholics movie, and marks the latest revival project for the streamer, especially of Nickelodeon IP, joining not just the aforementioned Zoey 101 movie, but the iCarly revival, the Rugrats reboot, The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder hybrid sequel series, and the recently announced The Thundermans movie, let alone Beavis And Butt-Head and Frasier outside of the Nickelodeon sphere.
