It’s be a long time since the unlikely pairing of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito brought Twins to life under the direction of Ghostbusters helmer Ivan Reitman, and despite numerous rumors over the last three decades it seemed like we would never see the duo back together on screen for a sequel. However, last month it was made official that Triplets would be bringing the unlikely siblings back to the screens with a new brother in the form of Tracy Morgan – who seemingly signed on to replace the intended inclusion of Eddie Murphy – all under the direction of Reitman again.
While the main men of the movie may be older, they certainly aren’t ready to act their age just yet, as has been proven by a video of Arnold Schwarzenegger attempting to prank his diminutive co-star with a cigar that wasn’t all it seemed to be. While filming doesn’t start on the film until next year, the stars have already gathered together, with Reitman, to promote the film getting underway. Along with a video of the attempted prank surfacing, Schwarzenegger detailed the whole thing in his recent newsletter.
“This month I also got together with my friend Danny DeVito to promote our movie Triplets!” Terminator actor Arnie wrote. “Ivan Reitman, our director who you know from Twins, Kindergarten Cop, and Ghostbusters, wanted to get us together with our new, third brother, Tracy Morgan over Zoom. Naturally, I saw this as the perfect opportunity to bring back a prank Danny pulled on me all those years ago on the set of Twins. You may remember the story about Danny putting marijuana in my cigar. Well, this time we turned the tables! We waited until the end of the shoot and gave Danny the gift. But unfortunately, he still has the nose of a bloodhound and sniffed out the special ingredient right away. Here is the video of me giving him the cigar. I’m still waiting on Danny to send me the video of him giving it a try later that night.”
Last month Reitman spoke to Deadline about how the idea for Triplets started with a meeting between big Arnie and Murphy. “Twins was quite successful, and some years after, this whole thing started with Arnold meeting Eddie Murphy, and the suggestion came from one of them,” Reitman said. “It was, ‘I should be a triplet, that could be a very funny comedy.’ We started a script with Eddie, and after the success he had with Amazon Prime on Coming 2 America, he got himself booked up heavily. And we knew we were going to make it at the beginning of next year. I’d been good friends with Tracy Morgan for a long time and always thought he was one of the funniest men in the world. I thought he would make a terrific triplet, and we rewrote the whole script for him. Now, we’ll go out and try and put the money together and get it made.”
Twins was a global hit for Universal, pulling in $216 million back in 1988, and while it seemed a certainty for a sequel, Reitman also explained that the movie never happened because of tight restrictions on a sequel having to be made very quickly, and Universal not wanting to take the risk as they felt the sequel hadn’t been developed enough at the time. “In terms of future rights, Universal had very restrictive secondary rights in terms of sequels,” he explained. “They had to act on it very quickly, which they didn’t, because we hadn’t really developed it.”
Of course, now things have changed and there is a plot to the new movie, which Reitman explained in the same interview. “Secretly, there was a third baby born, a Black baby, who hasn’t been in touch with his siblings,” Reitman explained. “They don’t know each other and very early in the movie they meet and it’s how they achieve a bond together after all these years. It’s really a film about family and, no matter how different we all are, we have to learn to get along. These guys have great chemistry together, and you can see that in the reel, and how much energy they bring out in each other.”
It is clear to see from the short prank video that he isn’t wrong, and his original leads still have the ability to bounce off each other and that can only mean good things for Triplets. With so many belated sequels tapping into a huge wave of 80s nostalgia, the movie could well be next in line to be another big revival hit when it arrives, expectedly sometime in 2023.
Source: movieweb.com