Anna Kendrick isn’t getting her hopes up.
Anna Kendrick knows that some movies become hits, while other very applaudable efforts fizzle. So while there was enough excitement over the first Pitch Perfect film to warrant doing another, she isn’t looking too far beyond that for the franchise until she sees how this one does.
“I’m really focused on putting this movie out and then letting the audience tell us what to do next. I’m not one to count my chickens, so I just want to see how this one does and find out if there’s an appetite for that before I even think about it,” Kendrick said. “I’ll drive myself crazy.”
Even the one that is in the can and headed to theaters made her a bit skittish. She didn’t want to just crank out a sequel for the sake of milking a franchise.
“I didn’t know if they were just going to do a sloppy seconds version of it, and that was the thing that made me nervous,” she said. “When I found out it was really going forward and it was going to be a real movie and everybody was coming back—there was no way I was going to miss out on that.”
Anna Kendrick sees Pitch Perfect 2 much the way her audience does, as very different from other summer blockbuster films. While it’s not all about explosions and life-threatening situations, she sees the film as daring in its own right.
“Even though the stakes are really high for these girls, the stakes in the grand scheme of things are super low,” she says. “My inspiration for the first movie, and hopefully for the second movie, was always Dodgeball. The universe of the movie is built on really low stakes, but I find that really charming! It doesn’t have to be like, the city’s going to blow up if we don’t defuse the bomb. It’s just people wanting to win.”
And when she hears that guys like Pitch Perfect too, she has a pretty brilliant response.
“It’s not like the humor excludes men,” she said. “My favorite thing on Twitter is guys being like, ‘Listen: I’m not a pussy, but Pitch Perfect is awesome.’ I’m like, ‘I didn’t think you were a pussy, sir.’ “