Fans Rejoice: ‘Spinal Tap II’ Set for Production with Original Cast Members

This. Is. Spinal. Tap. II.

The sequel to the popular “Rockumentary” is now in the works with the original film’s director Rob Reiner set to lead the new effort. Spinal Tap II will bring together David St. Hubbins (played by Michael McKean), Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) as the not-so-legendary rock band.

The new movie is reportedly the first film from the newly reformed Castle Rock Entertainment.

About the development, Reiner told Deadline that he hopes the new movie will be released on the 40th anniversary of the first.

“The plan is to do a sequel that comes out on the 40th anniversary of the original film and I can tell you hardly a day goes by without someone saying, why don’t you do another one? For so many years, we said, ‘Nah.’ It wasn’t until we came up with the right idea of how to do this,” said Reiner. “You don’t want to just do it, to do it. You want to honor the first one and push it a little further with the story.”

Currently, the nuts and bolts of the movie are under development by Guest, McKean, Reiner, and Shearer. The group improvised big chunks of the original film, which was released in 1984.

However, as Reiner said, the basic story is that the band has drifted apart.

“They’ve played Albert Hall, played Wembley Stadium, all over the country and in Europe,” Reiner explained. “They haven’t spent any time together recently… The idea was that Ian Faith, who was their manager, he passed away. In reality, Tony Hendra passed away. Ian’s widow inherited a contract that said Spinal Tap owed them one more concert. She was basically going to sue them if they didn’t. All these years and a lot of bad blood we’ll get into and they’re thrown back together and forced to deal with each other and play this concert.”

For the original movie, in which Guest, McKean, and Shearer wrote most of the music, the band included keyboardist Viv Savage (played by David Kaff) and drummer Mickey Shrimpton (played by Ric Parnell). However, Parnell recently passed away.

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images