Entertainment

The Future Looks Bright For The Lonely Island

After conquering the worlds of music and television, comedy troupe The Lonely Island have now turned their attention toward the cinema with their new film, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping . The movie is a complete Lonely Island production, starring Andy Samberg in the lead role and co-starring Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer. The film is also directed by Taccone and Schaffer, and is written by all three comedians. It's sure to be a success, so fans want to know if there will be another Lonely Island movie in the future.

History says there probably will be. The group has been working together for a long time, and they're unlikely to stop collaborating anytime soon. The three have been friends since middle school, and began working together as a comedy group in 2001. That's a decade and a half of creating content, and with Popstar being their highest profile work to date, odds are that they'll probably keep the entertainment coming. They started out by making their own videos and posting them on the internet, which led to a failed pilot at Comedy Central, a writing gig at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards, and then their big break came that same year when all three were hired as writers (and Samberg as a performer) at Saturday Night Live.

Longtime fans of the group know that Popstar is not their first feature length film. In 2007, The Lonely Island wrote and starred in the film Hot Rod, which Schaffer also directed. So really, the group's first film debuted nearly a decade ago, making Popstar their second all-around effort. Hot Rod had originally begun years earlier with a draft written by Pam Brady as a vehicle for Will Ferrell. After that fell through, Paramount Pictures, who held the rights to the film, enlisted The Lonely Island to take a crack at it, and they took full control by completely rewriting the script and making it their own. The movie bombed at the box office and did poorly with critics, but is now regarded as a cult classic by many fans.

While Hot Rod and Popstar could be considered the only through and through Lonely Island films to date (as in, they're the only ones that are written by, directed by, and star the trio), all three have lent their combined talents to a select few other films. The three wrote segments for, but did not appear in, the 2008 direct-to-video sketch comedy film, Extreme Movie. All three cameo as Toga partiers in the comedy Neighbors, and they also cameo as male cheerleaders in Adam Sandler's Grown Ups 2; alongside fellow SNL vets Will Forte, Bobby Moynihan, and Taran Killam.

So given their extensive history together, it seems likely that The Lonely Island will continue making movies and will probably someday create another film together after Popstar, because when it comes to creating content, The Lonely Island will never stop never stopping.