Before he took his talents almost exclusively to Netflix and became arguably the single biggest draw on a streaming service that boasts over 190 million subscribers worldwide, Adam Sandler was one of the few stars in the business who could open a movie at the box office based on the strength of his name and personal brand alone.
The actor’s filmography has raked in over $5.5 billion globally, which is even more impressive when you consider that he doesn’t really tend to make sequels. In fact, outside of his voice role in the animated Hotel Transylvania franchise, the only one of Sandler’s star vehicles to get a second installment has been Grown Ups, a rarity when the majority of Hollywood’s biggest earners always have at least one series under their belts that consists of three or more films.
However, insider Daniel Richtman is now claiming that a sequel to Billy Madison is in early development, which would see Sandler reprise his first ever big screen leading role. The template set by the 1995 comedy is one that the 53 year-old follows to this day, and finds him playing a petulant man-child in a formulaic narrative peppered with lowbrow humor and the very occasional bright spot.
The movie ended with the title character graduating the twelfth grade and giving up his multi-billion dollar inheritance to go to college and become a teacher, which is presumably where any intended sequel would pick up 25 years later. That being said, Billy Madison was released before Sandler founded his production company in 1999, so it isn’t clear whether the Happy Madison head honcho or Universal are in control of the rights, meaning there could be some obstacles in getting it off the ground.
