Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

“Jesus, Macarthur, Jay Z the great ones always return and when they do one thing is for sure, their hair will be perfect,” says one of the trailers of one of the most anticipated movies this year, Anchorman 2.

The original Anchorman, arguably the funniest movie of the 21st century, gets its long-awaited sequel in a few weeks, after years of speculation and planning. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues will come out on December 18, just in time for Christmas, and the amount of advertising for the film is enormous.  Will Ferrell seems to be everywhere right now. He has just published a book.  He recently went onto an actual news broadcast as Ron Burgundy, the star of Anchorman and asked his fellow anchor, Amber Schatz, an actual newscaster, “Are you married?”

He has a new line of underwear and to top it off, Ben and Jerry’s have created a new ice cream flavor called “Scotchy Scotch Scotch” which is inspired by Ron Burgundy’s love for scotch.

Burgundy’s book is titled “Let Me Off at the Top! My Classy Life and Other Musings.”  It is meant to promote both the movie and the myth of Ron Burgundy.

The book looks like it will be a hit — thousands of people recently lined up outside of a Barnes and Noble bookstore in New York City for an autographed copy. In the book, Ferrell covers subjects like how to survive a prison riot and also points out some of the things he believes have gone wrong in America, one of those things being that babies have gotten progressively more ugly. To add to the hilariously brazen persona of Ron Burgundy, he places a testimonial on the book’s cover that is written by himself and reads: “It’s one hell of a book.”

The packaging of Ferrell’s new line of underwear reads: “Don’t act like you’re not impressed,” one of the many memorable quotes from the first Anchorman movie.

In recent months, Ferrell has also created a series of hilarious Dodge Charger commercials where he is dressed as Ron Burgundy with his “sleek” clothes and “salon-quality hair.” Not only are the commercials funny, but they are actually working. Sales for Dodge cars have shot up nearly 59 percent, even though Ferrell publicly criticized Dodge on The Conan Show by saying that the cars are terrible.

Ferrell told Conan, “They gave me one for free and I drove it 4 feet and the thing cracked in half; just horrible craftsmanship.”

Even if the Dodge commercials, the underwear, the ice cream and the book are big hits, the thing that everyone, especially Ferrell, cares about most is the movie. Will it be as funny and popular as the first? All of the early signs, such as feedback from early screenings of the movie in California, indicate that it will be just as funny as the first, possibly funnier.

The film unofficially debuted in Burbank, California, on December 2nd. The early screening was free and first come, first served, with one exception: no members of the press were allowed in. After the screening, Twitter lit up with tweets from viewers, almost all of them good reviews, many fantastic.

“Caught a screening of Anchorman 2.,” tweeted Mike Effenberger of Twitter. “The series stays classy.”