Nicole Kidman's AMC commercial writer already wrote a sequel with a 'different approach'
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Are you ready for more dazzling images on a huge silver screen? Sound that you can feel? Heartbreak (somehow) feeling good in a place like this? Well, you're in luck: The screenwriter behind Nicole Kidman's iconic AMC Theatres commercial has penned a sequel.
After EW confirmed in August that the theater chain had renewed an existing deal to air Kidman's viral ad through the next year, Billy Ray has revealed that he's completed a draft of perhaps the most important sequel in Hollywood history.
"I got a text from the chairman of AMC about a month ago asking me if I would write the next one, and of course the answer to that is yes," Ray told Vanity Fair. "It's already written."
Still, a source close to the situation tells EW that "there is no plan for a second commercial at this time," so while Ray might've written it, there is reportedly no concrete deal in place to shoot it.
When pressed on the plot of the upcoming blockbuster commercial, Ray teased a new interpretation.
"All I can tell you about it is we are not dumb enough to fly in the face of the one we've already done and try to top it," he said. "So it's a very, very different approach that is a little bit of a wink to the one we've already done."
Ray, who's written major motion pictures like Flightplan, The Hunger Games, Richard Jewell, and the Oscar-nominated Captain Phillips, told the publication that he initially wanted to do the ad "as a favor" when Kidman reportedly asked him to work on it after the pair previously worked together on the 2015 film Secret in Their Eyes.
"I said I would do it for free just because I'm a fan and a friend of hers," Ray explained. "My agent said, 'No, that's not what's happening here. You need to be paid for this.' And it turns out my agent was right, because it's had real value."
AMC Theatres Nicole Kidman stars in her much-talked-about AMC Theatres commercial.
Representatives for Kidman and AMC Theatres did not immediately respond to EW's request for confirmation on the reported sequel.
Kidman's first commercial for the company went viral shortly after its release in September 2021, inspiring countless memes and parodies since its debut. Theatergoers even filmed themselves staging live communal recitations of the ad's script at various AMC locations.
The Oscar-winning actress eventually expressed shock over the clip's popularity in an interview with The Playlist, noting that the segment about heartbreak feeling "good in a place like this" was a "great line."
"It's so true," she said. "I mean, talk about not feeling alone, sitting in a cinema with a broken heart, and then watching something that breaks your heart again, and you go, 'I'm not alone.' Please. This must not go away. We have to have cinema."
Watch Kidman's first AMC Theatres commercial above.
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