Spinal Tap goes viral, Kate Bush-style, in upcoming sequel

Ask anyone on the street about the upcoming sequel to Spinal Tap, and they’d probably look at you quite strangely. Believe us, we know. For months, we’ve been conducting surveys with street people regarding the cultural awareness of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, and most respond with a casual, “Oh, didn’t hear about that one.” Part of that is because much of the excitement surrounding Spinal Tap these days is focused on the re-release of the original This Is Spinal Tap in honor of the film’s 41st anniversary. The other half is that there hasn’t been that much promotion regarding the film, its plot, or its release since its announcement. But The End will continue this fall, when Spinal Tap II hits theaters, hopefully to reviews that warrant a little more than two words.

Ahead of the re-release and the new film, director and co-star Rob Reiner, who plays Marty DiBergi, the diegetic director of the movie within the movie, shared the set-up for the sequel with Collider and explained why this is all Kate Bush’s fault. Reiner says that the film opens 15 years after Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) last played together. Not only had they not played together, but “they were not talking to each other. It was bad blood.” Over the course of the film, we find out what caused the bad blood, but more interestingly, why they decided to get the band back together. Following the death of their manager, Tony Hendra (played by the late Ian Faith in This Is Spinal Tap), Hendra’s daughter is bequeathed the group’s contract, which stipulates one more performance. Reiner continues:

[Hope] thinks, ‘Well, this is worthless because they haven’t played in 15 years. Who knows about these guys?’ Then we thought of Kate Bush, who had a song of hers on that show, Stranger Things. All of a sudden, there was a resurgence of this song and her and everything. We said, ‘That’s it.’ We get a famous rocker or somebody to be screwing around in a soundcheck, sings a song of Tap’s, somebody catches it on an iPhone, sticks it up on TikTok, it goes viral, and all of a sudden this last concert becomes valuable. That became the premise of the film. That’s as much as I can tell you, but that’s how we came up with the idea.

We can’t wait to see what streaming series caused “Sex Farm” to break like the wind on TikTok, but as far as premises for a legacy sequel to a landmark mockumentary goes, that’s not the worst in the world.

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is gonna rock you in theaters on September 12.

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