Will Ferrell turned down $29 million to make “not good” Elf sequel

“I would have had to promote the movie from an honest place, which would’ve been, like, ‘Oh no, it’s not good. I just couldn’t turn down that much money.’ And I thought, ‘Can I actually say those words? I don’t think I can, so I guess I can’t do the movie'," he said.

In the original film, Ferrell led the cast as Buddy the Elf, an eccentric and excitable human who was raised by Santa's elves, but who leaves the North Pole (and its stop-motion animated creatures) for New York in search of his birth father.

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The original Elf was released in the early 2000s, and Ferrell recounted in the same interview how he worried the film would prove a flop. Recalling running around New York dressed in yellow tights (part of his Buddy the Elf costume), he remembered thinking: “Boy, this could be the end.”

However, the test screenings for the film went unexpectedly well. His manager called regularly after each test: “He was like, ‘Well, the family one went great, but we could really get eviscerated in this next one. I’m looking at a bunch of what look like USC frat boys about to go in,'”said Ferrell. “Then later I hear, no, that group actually liked it, too.”

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