Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell will be taking fast food orders again in “Good Burger 2.”
But which celebrities will be doing the ordering?
Thompson and Mitchell announced the long-awaited sequel, which starts filming this summer, on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on Friday. The next day, Thompson crashed an “All That” panel at 90s Con in Hartford, Conn., and teased some potential cameos.
The longtime “Saturday Night Live” cast member first gushed that he would make “cameo calls” to former “All That” co-stars Danny Tamberelli and Lori Beth Denberg, who sat alongside Mitchell during the panel. Denberg also appeared in the original 1997 “Good Burger” movie. Thompson said he also had his sights on even bigger stars.
“I keep saying Harry Styles. I just feel like it would be a really big one, you know what I’m saying? One Direction!,” Thompson said, according to People, before adding that “Barack Obama would be great.”
Thompson further promised that comedian Sinbad would reprise his role as the short-tempered schoolteacher, Mr. Wheat.
“Sinbad definitely is gonna be back. Even if we got to go to him, we’ll make sure we have Sinbad for sure,” Thompson said during the panel, referencing the comedian’s health. Sinbad was hospitalized in a coma in 2020 after a blood clot had caused a stroke. He has since regained consciousness and has been recovering and learning how to walk again.
Rumors about a “Good Burger” sequel have swirled for years.
Keeping the idea alive among its fan base — mostly children of the 1990s — Thompson and Mitchell reunited during a 2015 “Fallon” episode and parodied their iconic characters of Ed and Dexter Reed. Then, in 2019, Mitchell went on to reprise his role in the Paramount+ “All That” reboot.
In recent months, as the duo began to appear together onscreen more often, talk of a sequel began to ramp up.
First came the 2022 Emmys moment where Thompson, who hosted the show, walked up to a dozing man at the bar and asked him what he wanted to drink. The man lifted his head, revealing he was Mitchell, and asked, “You know what, can I get a Good Burger?” The crowd burst into applause as the pair embraced.
As the pair pretended to do martial arts into the camera, Thompson exclaimed, “Sequel comin’ at ya!”
A month after the Emmys, Thompson told ET that he was “getting really close” on the sequel. “It’s gonna happen, and I think it’s gonna happen soon,” he said.
In a December episode of “SNL,” Thompson and Keke Palmer performed another“Good Burger” parody with Mitchell making a surprise appearance.
When Fallon asked the pair Friday what prompted production of the sequel, wondering whether it had been influenced by the 2015 “Tonight Show” skit or the recent “SNL” parody, Thompson deflected, giving sparse details: “It’s been years — since the first one, we’ve been wanting to do two.”
Thompson said he hoped to get “as many cameos as we could possibly get — anybody that wants to do it that is somewhat famous,” before asking an eager Fallon if he would join. Fallon agreed.
Thompson and Mitchell first met as teenagers during auditions for Nickelodeon‘s “All That,” which premiered in 1994. “Good Burger” was a spin-off of two characters from one of the show’s recurring skits, Ed (Mitchell) and Dexter Reed (Thompson). “All That” also led to “Kenan and Kel,” another spin-off starring Thompson and Mitchell that ran on Nick for four seasons.
The “Good Burger” sequel will begin with a reunion between the two characters. As Dexter’s career as an inventor fails, he returns to the Good Burger restaurant, where Ed welcomes him back, according to a Paramount press release. While Dexter makes a plan to recover from his failures, it inadvertently threatens the fate of the restaurant.
The film does not have a release date, but it will stream on Paramount+.
