Can you believe it’s been 18 years since the last Austin Powers movie? Star Mike Myers is notorious for being selective with his roles, which makes sense considering he’s only starred in a few projects since Austin Powers in Goldmember and hasn’t kept a very high profile in recent years.
He’s popped up in a number of movies in supporting roles, true, but they’ve curiously always been as characters in heavy prosthetics. Whether it’s Inglorious Basterds, Bohemian Rhapsody or Terminal, you never quite know he’s in a film until the credits start rolling. Perhaps it’s a stipulation in his contract that he always be partially in disguise. Like it’s a gimmick or something?
In any case, none of this has stopped speculation as to whether we’ll ever get an Austin Powers 4. Each movie in the series made more money than the last at the domestic box office, but the further we are removed from the franchise, the desire to go back and revisit it lessens.
Still, director Jay Roach is hopeful and wants to do another sequel. He’s also in communication with Myers about it, but it’s all about getting the story right and there’s certainly a lot of material in the current political climate to mine, with Roach saying the following:
“We talk about it once a month, but until we know what it specifically wants to be. I don’t disagree that there is a classic battle in the Austin films, that of sort of love versus fear and paranoia, and color versus colorlessness, and music versus fear. Dr. Evil, there are some aspects of the way the world works right now that seem very Dr. Evil-y to me. I’ll just put it that way. But no, we don’t have a specific plan for anything right now.”
The Austin Powers series is known for spoofing James Bond and they could definitely go down that road with the Daniel Craig Bond films. But like Roach said, there’s so much material for going beyond just spoofing another movie franchise. Not to mention that most of what Roach has done since Austin Powers has been mostly in the political satire genre, including Recount, Game Change and most recently, Bombshell.
Austin Powers is a beloved IP, but the track record for long-in-development comedy sequels isn’t great (see: Dumb and Dumber To, Zoolander 2 and Super Troopers 2). Still, I feel like Myers has one more big hit left in him, and maybe it’s this. They are bringing back the Mask with Jim Carrey in Space Jam 2, after all, so maybe that’ll drum up some excitement for other comedy icons?