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News team, disassemble: Will Ferrell and Adam McKay announce they are splitting ways | News | LIVING LIFE FEARLESS
EVA RINALDI

News team, disassemble: Will Ferrell and Adam McKay announce they are splitting ways

The pair had been working partners since their days on 'Saturday Night Live'

Perhaps we should have known something was up when Adam McKay made a movie about Dick Cheney, and he didn’t cast Will Ferrell as George W. Bush.

Ferrell and McKay recently announced that they are putting an end to their production partnership, per Variety. The dissolution of their company, Gary Sanchez Productions, will follow the completion of all projects currently being developed.

The two had been working together since their days on Saturday Night Live, when McKay had a hand in writing some of Ferrell’s most memorable bits, including the “Bill Brasky” sketches. After SNL, the two made five films: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Brothers, The Other Guys, and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, all of which were directed by McKay, starred Ferrell, and were written by the two of them. They also co-created the comedy website and multimedia franchise Funny or Die.

However, the last of those films, the second Anchorman, was released more than five years ago, without any indication that the two would be working together on any of the sorts of comedies that they produced together.

McKay, in recent years, has been gravitating towards ambitious films like 2015’s The Big Short – which won him an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay – and last year’s Vice, which also received several Oscar nominations. He is next scheduled to make Bad Blood, an adaptation of John Carreyrou’s bestselling book about the fall of blood-testing startup Theranos, in which Jennifer Lawrence is attached to play founder Elizabeth Holmes.

Adam McKay also announced late last year that he is no longer involved with Funny or Die, which has scaled down its operations in recent years. McKay, an outspoken liberal, had publicly objected not long before to Funny or Die producing a video that was sponsored by Shell, an oil company.

Both men say the split was amicable.

“The last 13 years could not have been more enjoyable and satisfying for the two of us at Sanchez Productions,” the two men said in a joint segment. “We give massive thanks to our incredible staff and executives and all the writers, directors and actors we worked with through the years. The two of us will always work together creatively and always be friends. And we recognize we are lucky as hell to end this venture as such.”

While it appears there will never be a third Anchorman film, the San Diego Padres recently established “Anchorman races,” in which costumed versions of the four major characters race on the field during selected home games:

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