Jason Bateman Horrible Bosses 2

Jason Bateman Horrible Bosses 2

Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Chris Pine, Christoph Waltz
Director: Sean Anders
Genre: Comedy
Rated: MA15+
Running Time: 108 minutes

Synopsis: The follow-up to the 2011 hit comedy 'Horrible Bosses" reunites Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis as everyone's favorite working stiffs: Nick, Dale and Kurt.

Fed up with answering to higher-ups, Nick (Bateman), Dale (Day) and Kurt (Sudeikis) decide to become their own bosses by launching their own business. But a slick investor soon pulls the rug out from under them. Outplayed and desperate, and with no legal recourse, the three would-be entrepreneurs hatch a misguided plan to kidnap the investor's adult son and ransom him to regain control of their company.

Horrible Bosses 2
Release Date: December 11th, 2014

 

 

About The Production

The Guys Are Back For More

'Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe it's about not having to work for anyone else ever again. I say we bet on ourselves."

In 2011, audiences around the world embraced Nick, Dale and Kurt, the hapless heroes of 'Horrible Bosses," who struggled under the yoke of supervisors so monstrous and out-of-control that they felt their only recourse was to bump them off. Fortunately, they were spectacularly unsuccessful, bungling the job at every turn in an escalating cycle of panic and insanely bad decisions that propelled the film to worldwide box office heights " and suggested that not everyone is cut out for homicide, however justifiable. Also, that these three might want to reconsider their career paths.

In 'Horrible Bosses 2,'" Nick, Dale and Kurt do exactly that, rallying with an original invention and another run at the American dream.

'They develop a product they think they can make, market and sell," says Jason Bateman. 'They put everything they have into it, and decide to bet on themselves, which is just not a good idea with these guys. It doesn't take very long for things to go wrong."

The new venture takes the three into uncharted territory and up against formidable new foes, but with the same unbeatable chemistry, crazy energy and go-for-broke enthusiasm that Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis first brought to their leading roles.

'It's the little things that sometimes get the biggest laughs," says Charlie Day, 'like when they're breaking into a house, or breaking out of a house, or just sitting in the car trying to figure out how to pull things off that they have no capacity to do. I think that's the charm of it."

'We can still surprise each other," admits Jason Sudeikis. 'Charlie Day, Jason Bateman and I become sort of a self-governing unit with a lot of checks and balances. I've been very lucky to have worked with some great ensembles, and this is one of the best."

Director and co-writer Sean Anders, who worked with Jason Sudeikis on last year's hit comedy 'We're the Millers," would concur. 'They were on fire," he says. 'We spent a lot of time working on the script in the month or two before shooting and then, on the day, we'd talk about the scene and come up with different ideas. We'd get a take or two that was more-or-less on script, and then we'd open it up and let the guys go nuts, and that's where some of the funniest moments came from. Sometimes my job was to watch the fireworks go off and hone in on the best stuff, because there was so much of it."

With such a comedically gifted cast, collaboration and improv reigned, and not only with Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis. Among the returning stars, Jennifer Aniston takes her portrayal of the sex-addicted dentist Julia Harris to another level, and Jamie Foxx takes on an expanded role as freelance crime consultant and world's worst negotiator Dean 'MF" Jones; while Chris Pine, as Rex Hanson, runs the gamut from suave to playful to totally unhinged. Even Christoph Waltz, whose baddie character Bert Hanson is written as intimidating and mirthless, rolled with the punches.

Sean Anders was specific about what he wanted the sequel to offer, saying, 'Our driving thought was that it had to be its own story, not just three new bosses and three different ways to kill them. What we wanted was these guys, who are so funny and who we all love, in a whole new caper that takes them to desperate places they couldn't imagine, and the desperate solutions they come up with."

'Like most people, what I loved about the first movie was not only the concept but the phenomenal comic interplay," says producer Chris Bender. 'It made me want to see what these guys were going to do next. They're such great characters that we wanted to put them into another impossible situation, turn them loose and see what happens."

This time, it's their nascent dreams of entrepreneurship that are crushed when an unscrupulous investor steals their invention and every penny they have. Or, considering the massive loan they're still on the hook for, every penny they will ever have.

Granted, not everyone who gets the short end of a business deal would kidnap the swindler's grown son to recoup their losses, but thinking outside the box is what makes Nick, Dale and Kurt so much fun. Their earlier attempted murders didn't work out so well, in retrospect, but maybe that just wasn't their thing, as Dale suggests and to which Kurt heartily agrees. Kidnapping… now that's something they might really have a talent for. And, bonus: nobody gets hurt.

But things start to get complicated when their intended victim takes the upper hand. Expanding on that potential, producer John Morris, who co-wrote the 'Horrible Bosses 2" screenplay with Sean Anders, says, 'We loved the idea of them concocting and then calling off a kidnapping plot, only to have the victim force them to go through with it. Plus, it puts the three of them, who clearly have no business committing crimes, into a position of figuring out what to do, based on all the movies they've seen." At the same time, 'We were making fun of that, too, the way we all watch those movies and comment on the mistakes the criminals are making, as if we could do it so much better.'"

Producer John Rickard, along with 'Horrible Bosses 2" producers Brett Ratner and Jay Stern, is a proud alumnus from 'Horrible Bosses." Like his colleagues, John Rickard was looking for something fresh that captured the dark humor, guilty pleasure and down-and-dirty mayhem of that first outing and credits Anders and Morris as 'the ones who really cracked the new story and found ways to get our three guys into more trouble. They did a great job. We were all striving to give this movie its own identity while making sure that they were in over their heads again."

'It brings everything audiences loved about the first movie and takes it so far beyond, with the characters, the concept and the comedy, which is total fish-out-of-water," says Brett Ratner. "Being a producer on this gave me so much joy as I got to see how much these actors, who I know separately, brought to their characters as a group. They have undeniable chemistry. And to witness that is so much fun."

Perhaps the most striking thing about seeing Nick, Dale and Kurt together again, apart from their enduring optimism and unfailing support for one another, is that they haven't gained much wisdom from their experiences, or evaluated their problem-solving skills.

Sean Anders jokingly points out, 'What's tough about a lot of sequels is that the first story takes the characters through some kind of transformation, where they begin as one kind of person and then change into a better, more enlightened person at the end. But -Horrible Bosses' wasn't meant to be super heartwarming; it wasn't that kind of party. So we had the leeway to jump right in and keep it funny and crazy and not get wrapped up in these guys realising great life lessons. In fact, I think it's safe to say that, at the end of the second movie, they still haven't learned anything."
Taking Care Of Business

'I'm a little insulted you only asked for $500,000 for me. So I tacked on another zero."

As much as they function best as a team, or what Jason Bateman calls 'this three-headed monster, a sort of collective idiot," 'Horrible Bosses 2" lets Nick, Dale and Kurt also shine as distinctly individual personalities.

Says Jay Stern, 'That's really the strength and the secret of this kind of ensemble. There are people watching around the world who might not identify with all of them but will see a bit of themselves in Dale, or maybe Nick, or Kurt, so audiences have multiple opportunities to get drawn into it."

Of the three leads, Jason Bateman had arguably the toughest assignment just because, as Nick, he had to keep the smile off his face most of the time " a tall order in this company. 'I wouldn't call him a straight man in the classic sense," says Sean Anders. 'His character is just a little more grounded. So while Charlie Day would be sweating and going off, and Jason Sudeikis was lobbing all these great ad-libs with all his enthusiasm, Bateman would get laughs on just the looks he was giving. That's not to say he didn't bust up a few times, but it was hard to break him."

'His timing is masterful," adds Bender. 'He knows exactly when to deliver a cutting line or a look that takes the other guys out at the knees for being such boneheads."

But for all of Nick's assumptions that he's in charge and he's the smart one and the voice of reason, and for all the valid points he does occasionally raise about the pitfalls of what they're about to do, the fact remains that he always ends up going along with the plan. Jason Bateman notes, 'My job as Nick is to be as close as possible to a representative for the audience, and to react to the absurdity in these scenarios in enough of a realistic way so they don't think it's too goofy. But honestly, most people are a lot brighter than these three; most people wouldn't think that killing their bosses or kidnapping their business partner is the right thing to do, or has the slightest chance of working out well. But if they were smart, this would be a drama."

Charlie Day's character, Dale, wouldn't likely engage in such analysis. His needle only points in one direction or the other: total fear and denial, or total gung-ho commitment. Above all, Dale's first impulse is to avoid anything that will get him in trouble with his wife, a tendency he displayed in the first round when she was just his fiancée and is now amplified because the stakes are so much higher on the home front.

'They have triplets," offers Charlie Day. 'Though it's not in the script, I'm assuming they got pregnant on their first attempt and then, surprise, it's triplets! Because that's what would happen to Dale. In one way, his dreams have come true, he got married to the woman he loves. But he's in a little over his head with that already, and then they took this huge risk to start their own company, so Dale's stress level is off the charts."

Also off the charts is the lengths to which he is prepared to go to make things right. 'Dale is all over the place, flipping out one moment and being ominously quiet the next," says Sean Anders. 'He's the most neurotic and easily frightened of the three, and so the least predictable, and Charlie Day gives him the most amazing, infectious energy; he's pitch perfect. Dale will jump head-first into some crazy idea like it's brilliant, and then, the next moment, be screaming about how stupid it is and how it's going to ruin their lives."

Kurt, meanwhile, not one to worry like Nick, or panic like Dale, continues to sail along with full confidence that everything will work out and it's all good, despite all evidence to the contrary, because he's just that cool. If something goes wrong, they'll just figure out a way around it, right?

'I think of Jason Sudeikis as a very athletic comedian," says Sean Anders, 'because, first of all, he's lightning fast and he can run with the ball on his own, or pass, or set up the offense, whatever it takes. He's spent so much time at Second City and -Saturday Night Live' in that really competitive environment where you always have to be at the top of your game; he has those muscles finely tuned."

Jason Sudeikis' take on Kurt is 'happy-go-lucky, almost like a puppy dog. He likes to have fun, and he's willing to go for it. He's a bit of an adrenalin junkie, too, so long as there are no heights involved; if he can stay in the same relative longitude and latitude, he's willing to try just about anything. I think Kurt, like his cohorts, is a product of the -Yes we can' generation, and feels that anything he sets his mind to, he can accomplish."

That attitude, combined with their checkered past, is what Jason Sudeikis believes leads Kurt and his friends into further trouble. 'The criminal activity they engaged in the first time really didn't change their world very much," he notes. 'They got away with it. And that made them think maybe they could do things they really shouldn't be doing, like being their own bosses." Or being inventors. Case in point: their brainchild, The Shower Buddy. A contraption of tubes and containers that fits over a person's head and dispenses soap, water and shampoo like a car wash, it's designed to alleviate the stress and labor of doing those things by hand.

The device was actually conceived by writing partners Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley who contributed, with Sean Anders and Morris, to the 'Horrible Bosses 2" story. Says Jonathan Goldstein, 'We spent days trying to come up with plausible inventions. It turns out to be very difficult to create something that doesn't already exist, let alone something with a funny name." But when they hit upon a product made to simplify a process that's already about as basic as humanly possible, they knew they'd hit the jackpot. 'We felt The Shower Buddy was the sort of thing that could show up in a catalogue," adds John Francis Daley. 'It also lent itself to an unintentionally pornographic demonstration on live TV."
What he's referring to is the guys' disastrous appearance on 'Good Morning Los Angeles," where they hope to solicit start-up funds by showcasing their prototype. It's a performance that goes south in so many ways because, as Jason Sudeikis concedes, 'They're as bad at pitching products as they are at trying to murder people."

Even so, they capture the attention of Rex Hanson, played by Chris Pine, representing a giant mail-order retailer owned by his multimillionaire father, Bert Hanson, played by Christoph Waltz. A well-tailored, world-class charmer, Rex Hanson proposes a deal that his savvy dad then closes with a handshake, sending Nick, Dale and Kurt on a joyful journey of leasing a warehouse, hiring staff, and working like dogs to meet their first order of 100,000 units. It's all cake and balloons until Bert ruthlessly cancels the order " which was his intent all along " plunging the trio into financial ruin and stealing both their inventory and their idea, which he re-names The Shower Pal. And there's nothing they can do about it. Well, nothing rational.

'Having already quit their jobs and put everything they had into this venture, they are screwed beyond belief," says Jason Bateman. 'And there's no question about trying to rectify the situation in a legal way because they don't have the resources for a court battle."

At this point, it's more than one insult or one rip-off; it's about a lifetime of setbacks and frustration, and they just can't take it anymore. As Charlie Day explains, 'It's the feeling that you'll never make it because there's always going to be someone above you who's going to crush you. No matter how hard you try, you are just never going to make it into that world where people like Rex and Bert live, because they won't let you. So the guys say, -All right, what can we do? We have no other options. We'll kidnap Bert's arrogant son and hold him up for the money to pay off our debts.'"

'-Horrible Bosses' faced the challenge of making these heroes likable while they were plotting to murder people," notes Bender. 'Their bosses had to be so vile that audiences would want to see them eliminated, but how can we justify them taking the felonious path again? It's hyperbole but they're still true underdogs, and everything they do makes you root for them. When they come face to face with the worst of capitalism and corporate greed it just sends them down a hole that they need to dig themselves out of and, in the process, takes a humorous shot at all those instances where big business takes advantage of the little guy."

To give credit where credit is due, after their first ill-conceived and ineptly executed attempt to drug and kidnap Rex " with an arts-and-crafts ransom note and some nitrous oxide lifted from Dale's former dental office " they realize it's a lot harder than it looks and vow to quit while they're ahead. But that's when Rex hijacks the operation. Seeing an easy way to shake some cash out of his dad, he wants in. Only he's going to raise the payoff by $4.5 million and take the lion's share, while leaving all the risk to his new partners. It's not the best idea the guys have ever heard but they have no choice. Rex has their note, the empty nitrous canisters and, yeah, they left about a thousand fingerprints all over his house.

Calling his character 'a joyful narcissist," Chris Pine cites some of the possible reasons for Rex's volatile mental state. 'Rex wants power and he gets continually emasculated by his distant, evil father, who is never satisfied with anything he does and seems not to care much for his privileged brat of a son. Poor Rex. He makes me laugh. He's smart but he's not all that self-aware, and he gets stranger and stranger as the story progresses."

'We wanted a unique villain with a lot of contradictions and a great sense of humor, and he also had to be good-looking, dapper and cool because we liked the idea that our guys kind of have man-crushes on him a little bit," says Sean Anders. 'You also get the feeling that on some level Rex really likes these guys and has a good time with them. Of course, he has to screw them over because that's who he is, but at the same time I think he considers them his friends, and Chris Pine got that crazy balance beautifully."

Chris Pine, who had been looking to do a comedy and responded in a big way to the 'Horrible Bosses 2" script, took a purposefully relaxed approach as the fourth to an already precision-calibrated threesome. 'They all take it seriously but they also know how to play. My prescription was to stay loose, hang with the guys and follow the music of the scene," he says, which gave them a different energy to play against.

Those inclined to judge Rex too harshly should just look at what he comes from: Bert Hanson, a man who, by his own satisfied admission, makes new enemies every day. 'What I like about Bert," Sean Anders offers, 'is that this guy who comes in and totally destroys their lives probably only thought about it for 11 seconds because, to him, it's just business."

Having cast Christoph Waltz as the quintessential villain, the director admits, 'It was a bit daunting, bringing him into some of these silly scenarios, because it's impossible not to be mindful of those amazing, Oscar-winning dramatic roles he's most famous for. But that's precisely why he was right for Bert. His job here was to be the heavy. Had it been someone else who didn't have Christoph Waltz's presence, Bert wouldn't have been as threatening."

Christoph Waltz didn't need to play funny because the humor of his scenes sparked from playing it straight. After all, it's Bert's casual cruelty that drives Nick, Dale and Kurt to retaliation, not to mention the depths of depravity to which his heartlessness goads his own son.

'My part is fairly straightforward and serious, but it gives them the opportunity to spring into action, like the sprocket in a mechanism," says Christoph Waltz. 'Comedy is all about timing, tempo and rhythm. In this case, my character is a vehicle for these fabulously funny people, and that's what makes the machinery work. These guys have a great energy that is constantly running. It's a fascinating process to watch."

Meanwhile, as if dealing with the Hansons and avoiding the law wasn't already a full-time job, Nick, Kurt, and especially Dale, take on the additional complication of Dr. Julia Harris "Dale's former horrible boss herself, played again by the unforgettable Jennifer Aniston. The hot dentist with an overactive libido and a yen for Dale, who once made him so miserable that he was ready to kill her, seems to be making strides toward conquering her demons. She's in rehab now, even offering up her office, the site of so much unspeakable debauchery, as an after-hours meeting place for her therapy group.

'She's trying to better herself. She's in a sex-addiction group and we're thinking that she's doing pretty well this time," Jennifer Aniston says, while acknowledging that the jury is still out on how committed Julia is to her new lifestyle. 'I think she knows that everyone at those meetings is pretty vulnerable and on the verge of falling off the wagon, so for her it's sort of another avenue for flirtation. She's not well. She's just not."

Sean Anders worked with Jennifer Aniston on last year's hit comedy 'We're the Millers," for which he and John Morris were screenwriters. Of their 'Horrible Bosses 2" collaboration he relates, 'Jennifer Aniston took this character pretty far out in the first movie, so when we sat down with her for the new story, to our surprise and delight, her note was, -Can we push it even further? Can I be crazier?' She really was up for anything, and so funny. She came up with a lot of outrageous language that we worked into the dialogue. She really has a lot of fun with that character."

Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston's 'We're the Millers" co-star, jokes, 'It's a wonderful thing that we get to capitalize again on her willingness to be a nympho potty mouth."

Jennifer Aniston admits that part of the enjoyment of slipping back into the raunchy role was eliciting reactions from the director and her fellow actors during production. In her scenes with Jason Bateman, whom she has known for many years, 'I think we were trying to out-squirm each other, which was really fun. And Charlie Day is another one we like to see squirm. Charlie Day is adorable. He's game for anything but he blushes easily."

For Charlie Day's character, Dale, Dale's friends, and probably audiences everywhere, the question remains: why him? Surely she can do better. Yet for all Julia's conquests, and all those who would gladly stand in line for the chance, she still can't break her fixation over her onetime assistant for the simple reason, Sean Anderssuggests, 'that he said no. I think that's the main reason why people want anything. There's nothing more exciting than what you can't have."

Also returning to the cast is Jamie Foxx as Dean 'MF" Jones, the enigmatic, scalp-tatted ex-con whose counsel the guys first sought in 'Horrible Bosses," and who is still their tenuous link to what they imagine is some kind of seething underworld they know nothing about. In fact, as Dean Jones sagely states, the three of them " with attempted murder already behind them and a kidnapping in the works " are the most badass crazy criminals he's ever known in his life.

For Jones, the problem is that they're trying to have it both ways: maintaining their squeaky clean, regular-Joe personas while driving around with a carload of rope and duct tape. Says Jamie Foxx, 'Jones started out as a kind of murder consultant and has evolved into a motivator. It's a tough love thing. He's trying to let them know that they don't necessarily need his advice anymore, they just need to stop messing around. They need to own and embrace the criminals that they are and get on with it. It was like a halftime speech and Jones was the coach, saying, -You gotta go out there and bring this thing home.'"

Jones proved such a rich character and fan favorite in the first film that his role was expanded in the sequel, 'taking him out of his favorite bar booth where he regularly transacts business and getting him into a car chase, among other things," Sean Anders says.

'Jamie Foxx has such an effortless way of being funny," the director continues. 'He's an incredible actor, he sings, and he comes from a sketch comedy and improv background, so he's just one of those guys who can do it all, a consummate performer. There was no question that he could keep up with the Jason Bateman-Charlie Day-Jason Sudeikis onslaught and he does, and he's amazingly funny, sometimes with just a look or a pause."

Rounding out the main cast, Lindsay Sloane reprises her role as Dale's wife, Stacy. Now the harried mother of young triplets, Stacy still has an instinct for knowing when her man is in trouble, even if she's a little unclear on the specifics. Veteran character actor Jonathan Banks appears as the stone-faced and perpetually suspicious Detective Hatcher; and Keegan-Michael Key and Kelly Stables trade highly caffeinated banter as the hosts of a local morning show where Nick, Dale and Kurt debut The Shower Buddy.

Making The Drop

'Wrong way, wrong way. Turn around. Stop the car! Who are you texting?!"

'Horrible Bosses 2" delivers a lot of action with its laughs: fist-fights and sucker punches, break-ins, gunplay, people getting shoved into the trunks of cars, and an edge-of-your-seat nighttime pursuit through downtown Los Angeles involving multiple cop cruisers, a train, a bridge, and one very stubborn chain-link fence.

The chase is an amalgam of stunts, practical effects and green screen, Sean Anders outlines. 'We did pieces of it over weeks. Our special effects supervisor, Jeremy Hays, was a real trouper; he was all cut up from the fence and trying to figure out how to keep the car drive-able. The visual effects team meanwhile was going crazy trying to shoot chain link with a green screen. Ultimately we got to launch the car off a jump and actually hang it from a bridge. That was a great night, just to be there with all of that going on," he admits, exposing his film-fan enthusiasm. 'I love this stuff."

To choreograph the manic, high-speed sequence, the filmmakers enlisted stunt coordinator Thomas Robinson Harper, whose credits include the complex highway run in 'The Matrix Reloaded." Harper underscores Sean Anders' belief that 'for a physical comedy like this, it's important to do things as real as possible because the comedy's more impactful. You know what they say, it's all funny until somebody loses an eye…and then it's hilarious."

'Going the wrong direction into traffic is, believe it or not, more dangerous than doing a 70 mile-per-hour cannon roll flip," Thomas Robinson Harper adds. 'We had about 18 top-notch stunt people involved, and a camera car driver, Mike Majesky, who's one of the best in the business."

Finding three old-model Rancheros to serve as Jones' vintage ride, off a suggestion from Sean Anders, Thomas Robinson Harper's team overhauled them with new tires, brakes and shocks. Then, he says, 'We put the gears into the rear. We made a lower gear called a positive traction, so that both rear wheels turn at the same time and we can slide them around. There's also a turning brake, hand-operated, with a master cylinder that goes to the rear brakes that locks up both rear wheels for more slide. Finally, we put eye bolts in the floor to secure the stuntmen's seatbelts."

They also donned state-of-the-art harnesses, while large blocks of foam were packed into the car's rear undercarriage to absorb its collision with the pavement. 'We knew we had to raise our game to the level of comedy that these guys were going to put into it," Thomas Robinson Harper says. But it wasn't just the stunt performers taking the jolts. Jamie Foxx as the car's driver, and Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis as his terrified-but-oddly-thrilled passengers, took a ride of their own for the scene.

'Sean Anders wanted it to be full of life, full of action," says Visual Effects Supervisor Bruce Jones, who married stunt footage and 360-degree background plates to the actors' performances in a mock-up vehicle on a green-screen stage. 'It was a fully gimbaled car with a set of air bags, so when we had to simulate banking a hard left or hard right we dropped it quickly and they crammed together so it felt like they were careening around corners, sliding left and right, back and forth, or you stopped quickly and they pitched forward."

With a tone of mock outrage, Charlie Day recounts, 'We were, I don't know, maybe 25 or 30 feet in the air in this car, and a guy kind of buzzes over on a crane and says, -We're gonna tip the car 90 degrees,' and buzzes away. Then they called action and the car just tipped over and, luckily it worked and we're all still here but that could have been it. That could have been the end."

The actors were never in danger but somehow had missed that memo. Says John Rickard, 'The special effects supervisor had placed a board where they could put their feet for support while the car was tipping, but they were unaware of that and so they really felt like they were falling over, like being in a rollercoaster."

Chris Pine, meanwhile, relates his own physical comedy experience, early in the shoot. 'It was my first big scene, where Rex goes to their warehouse office and tries to talk them into letting him in on the kidnapping scheme," he says. 'Rex is always having a good time until things don't go his way and then he can really lose it. So when the guys turn him down he starts slamming his head into the desk until they agree to play ball. I think I got whiplash. I was doing this all day, and in the moment. You get to the point where you're not really thinking about it, or you're saying, -This is great,' and then you go home and you can't move your neck. But, yeah, great fun."

Chris Pine might have known what he was getting into. As Rickard says with a laugh, 'On day one, it was like, -Hi, it's good to meet you, could you just get into the trunk of this car.'"

In addition to shooting downtown along such well-known thoroughfares as Hill, Grand, Olive, Olympic, 6th Street, 11th and Broadway, the production returned to Licha's Bar and Grill on 7th Street, where the guys originally discovered 'MF" Jones in 'Horrible Bosses" and where he still holds court in a dimly lit old-school booth. Other locations in and around Los Angeles included the Staples Center, the Trump International Golf Course along the coast in Palos Verdes, and the train-crossing at 22nd Street and Signal in neighboring San Pedro.

Production designer Clayton Hartley recreated portions of Julia Harris' dental office on a soundstage, extended with a lobby, hallways and bathroom for a scene in which Dale and Kurt add burglary to their rap sheets. Bert Hanson's spacious office features an eclectic collection of fearsome-looking animal skeletons, military artifacts, and one-of-a-kind sports and pop culture memorabilia for an overall effect of intimidating, in-your-face, unattainable wealth. And a private hilltop home in Los Angeles offered the exteriors and interiors of Rex's showy, ultra-modern residence, where the guys launch their kidnapping plan in a scene that plays out quite differently " and a whole lot more fun " than they imagined.

Fun was certainly the word of the day, whether cameras were rolling or not.

'I think what people want in a sequel, and what all of us wanted as well, was to see Bateman, Day and Sudeikis together again," says Sean Anders, 'and for Nick, Dale and Kurt to attempt something else they should not be doing.

'It's obvious these actors have a great deal of affection for their characters, as do audiences," he concludes. 'They're the kind of guys people want to hang out with and that's really the joy and the satisfaction of making a movie like this. If the actors feel unconstrained and are genuinely enjoying their work, I believe that enjoyment and chemistry has a way of showing on the screen. People feel it, and it gives them the sense that they're in for a good time."

Horrible Bosses 2
Release Date: December 11th, 2014