Mike Myers’ insane original idea for ‘Wayne’s World 2’: “I didn’t want to do a second one”
In 1992, Wayne’s World made the world fall in love with dimwitted metalheads Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar. The comedy was the brainchild of Mike Myers, who played the character of Campbell on popular Saturday Night Live sketches before his wacky adventures were expanded to feature length. A worldwide box office take of $183million meant a sequel was inevitable, but Myers wasn’t keen on the idea. In fact, he only became passionate about it when he came up with an insane concept for the story – a concept that nearly left the production in ruins weeks before the shoot began.
When Paramount initially approached Myers about the sequel, he was less than enthusiastic. In a 2024 interview with Vulture, he explained that he always saw Wayne’s World as a different prospect than one of his other iconic characters, the swinging superspy Austin Powers. When he and director Jay Roach talked about bringing Powers back for a second and third film, they convinced themselves there was a legitimate reason for returning to the well: the audience. He explained, “We wanted to honour them for having seen the first one and then the first two. Not to be immodest, but the third did more than the second, and the second did more than the first. We made sure that you understand why you’re being brought back to this world.”
Unlike Powers, though, Myers didn’t see any burning reason for Wayne Campbell to return to cinema screens. He confessed, “I didn’t want to do a second one. I didn’t think it necessitated a sequel.” However, when a huge amount of money is there to be made, a movie studio is unlikely to take no for an answer. So, Myers came up with an idea that appealed enough to him to begin writing a script. In classic Myers fashion, the Anglophile comedian was heavily inspired by a 1949 English comedy called Passport to Pimlico.
Myers was adamant, “I said to everyone at Paramount at the time, ‘There is a movie called Passport to Pimlico. I’ll write this, but you have to get the rights for it.’ They said, ‘Fine, go ahead and write it.’ I mentioned Passport to Pimlico in every meeting.”
The plot of the obscure British comedy dealt with a small part of the Pimlico area of London being declared legally the domain of the House of Burgundy, which made it exempt from Britain’s post-war rationing. In Myers’ update, Campbell finds a scroll from the Revolutionary War that indicates his hometown of Aurora, Illinois, never actually signed up to be a part of the United States. When he tries to put on a rock concert and is turned down by the local government, he declares Aurora the ‘Kingdom of Waynedavia’ – the world’s first heavy metal state.
Wayne’s World 2 went into pre-production with this script, but then everything went pear-shaped. Despite his repeated claims that he told Paramount to secure the right to Passport to Pimlico, no such thing happened. When a new studio administration took power, Myers claimed it told him, “We never got the rights to it, and you’re shooting in ten weeks.”
According to Leading Lady, the biography of then-Paramount chief Sherry Lansing, she and Myers had an intense confrontation in her office over the entire debacle. One unnamed employee in the meeting claimed Lansing screamed at Myers, “How dare you? How dare you put us in this position?” and even threatened, “We’ll sue you. We’ll take your fucking house. You won’t even own a fucking home.”
In this version of events, Myers was so terrified by Lansing’s threats that he curled into the fetal position on her sofa. She then allegedly told him, in no uncertain terms, “If I were you, Mike, I’d go to Lorne’s office right now and stay there until you come up with a new script. We’ll slide food under the door.”
Ultimately, Myers took some of the ideas from his script and reshaped them into a narrative about Campbell trying to organise Waynestock, a music festival in Aurora. The movie received mixed reviews and made only $72million worldwide, less than half the first film’s total. Perhaps Myers was right, and there really was no reason to bring Wayne’s World back – no matter how many studio heads threatened to ruin his life.
