Last August, writer and director David Wain seemingly closed the gates to Camp Firewood with his second Netflix limited series, Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later. However, in a recent interview with Consequence of Sound, he suggests that those gates aren’t necessarily locked, as there may be even more stories to tell revolving around our favorite counselors.
“There actually was a whole winter version that we developed at one time, that was about a New Year’s party, and there’s been lots of ideas about a lot of things to sort of expand the WHU, so to speak,” he says with a laugh. “So, my feeling is, we sort of ended the primary story at the end of 10 Years Later, but I think there’s a lot more we could explore at some time and place.”
Back in 2015, Wet Hot composer Craig Wedren told us about this same idea, saying: “One thing that I think would be interesting to explore is — and over the years, there’s been casual talk and sometimes not so casual talk about doing a sequel, or a prequel, or a spin-off or something like that — but my thought a few years ago was “What about Wet Hot American Summer … winter?”
Wain and Wedren both grew up together in Shaker Heights, Ohio — in fact, Wet Hot American Summer is partly based on their mutual summer camp experiences — and it sounds as if their winters were even crazier. “We would go to New York and visit our friends who were searching their souls,” Wedren told us in the same interview. “We would all get dressed up and go to Studio 54, or go out to Limelight, or whatever club was happening at the time…”
So, you could imagine how that might translate to the Wet Hot brand: a still-virginal Victor (Ken Marino) could roll up to Studio 54 looking to get laid (he won’t), while a befuddled Coop (Michael Showalter) could sit at the bar and regale everyone with pseudo-intellectual anecdotes about the mid-’80s. It’s almost too good to pass up, and odds are, they won’t.
“Frankly, we’ve been so busy with other things at the moment,” Wain admits, “but will perhaps circle back to that soon.” He’s not kidding: His star-studded National Lampoon biopic, A Futile and Stupid Gesture, hits Netflix on January 26th, and he’s currently developing a new series with his Stella crew called Moon Cruise, “which is about Love Boat in space.” Fortunately for the Wet Hot franchise, time and age does not matter whatsoever. If anything, the longer they wait, the funnier it gets on screen.
In the meantime, stay tuned next week for our full interview with Wain in which he revisits his early days at summer camp, his jump from NYU to The State, and how he got projects like Role Models or They Came Together off the ground.
