U2's The Edge Wrote an 'Elf' Sequel. It 'Petered Out,' Says Andy Richter

By Daniel Okafor

The Edge wrote a full sequel script to "Elf." It exists, somewhere, and nobody has read it. That, at least, is Andy Richter's account, delivered on a recent episode of "Obsessed: The Podcast."

Richter, who appeared briefly in the 2003 film as one of Walter Hobbs' colleagues, said the story reached him through Shauna Robertson, a producer of the original movie. Somebody contacted her with a message that David Howell Evans — the U2 guitarist better known as the Edge — had completed a script for "Elf 2" and wanted to talk.

What exactly did the Edge write?

"Somebody reached out to her and said, 'The Edge from U2 has written a sequel to "Elf," and he wants to talk to you about it,'" Richter said. "It's the weirdest story, but apparently it was fully written."

He didn't stop there. "Somewhere in the world there is an Edge-penned 'Elf 2' out there… I would love for that to make the light of day," he said. "It never happened."

The meeting, apparently, was the problem. Or the lack of momentum after it. "It's one of those things where she's like, 'All right, sure, I'll meet him,' and then it just petered out and never happened," Richter said.

A rock guitarist drafting a Christmas-comedy sequel sounds implausible. Then again, this is the same industry that once gave us a sequel draft about evil polar elves. Scot Armstrong, the writer behind "Old School" and "The Hangover Part II," penned a separate "Elf 2" script, Richter said, one involving "the evil South Pole elves kidnapping Santa or something like that."

Richter added a procedural footnote: Armstrong also worked on the original "Elf" script but went uncredited for guild reasons. In Hollywood, the paperwork is often stranger than the fiction.

Why no sequel, 23 years on?

"Elf," directed by Jon Favreau, opened in theaters in 2003. It starred Will Ferrell as Buddy, a human raised at the North Pole who travels to New York City to find his biological father, Walter Hobbs, played by James Caan. The cast also included Zooey Deschanel and Mary Steenburgen.

Twenty-three years later, the film remains a holiday staple. That endurance, in Richter's view, is precisely the argument against a sequel. "I'm on the side of 'Let it stand,'" he said. "Just let 'Elf' be 'Elf.' You don't have to use every part of the animal."

He elaborated: "Now that time has passed, the movie has become so special that I think that people, rightfully so, are loath to mess with it because we all can think of movies that have been tarnished by their sequels. And this is so special and so perfect and so beloved… Why risk it?"

Where does the story go from here?

Richter has a book in the game. He co-wrote "Elf Unwrapped: Behind the Scenes of a Modern Christmas Classic," released Tuesday. So his podcast appearance doubles, conveniently, as promotion.

The tantalizing detail remains the script itself. A completed "Elf 2" by a member of U2 sits unread in a drawer, a filing cabinet or a hard drive, unless it has been lost entirely. Richter wants it public. Whether the Edge, Favreau or any rights holder agrees is another matter, and 23 years of sequel inertia suggests nobody is in a rush.