In the sexy romantic comedy Beautiful Disaster, college freshman Abby and bad-boy brawler “Mad Dog” Maddox fell in love after a bet. In Beautiful Wedding they wake up after a crazy night in Vegas as accidental newlyweds. Writer/director Roger Kumble says that while a sequel wasn’t originally planned, a fun end credits sequence set up the characters for another adventure.
When the cast and crew filmed Beautiful Disaster in Bulgaria, they weren’t thinking about a second film. During the film’s editing process, however, Kumble and producers began discussing a sequel.
“I knew (the Vegas party photos) would make a fun credits sequence, and then it kind of dovetailed into ‘Oh, maybe this could be the start of the next film,’” Kumble says.
“What’s interesting to me is going into what happens after happily ever after. Can love survive the initial passion? Can these two defy the odds?’”
Picking up where Beautiful Disaster left off, college students Abby Abernathy (Virginia Gardner) and Travis Maddox (Dylan Sprouse) wake up after a wild night of partying in Las Vegas with no memory of what happened … and discover they got married. Along with Abby’s six-figure poker winnings and their two best friends, Shepley and America, the newlyweds travel to Mexico to enjoy a lavish honeymoon.
As soon as they arrive at a luxury seaside resort, chaos erupts. Much like Abby and Travis’s relationship, the trip gets crazier at every turn, with plenty of seductive strangers, surprise reunions, angry roosters, and even a lucha libre match. (And that’s before the bachelor and bachelorette parties even start.)
Always the practical one, Abby has devised a point system to decide if she and Travis should remain married or get an annulment. On the plus side, they make each other laugh and can’t keep their hands off each other. Then again, they’re still negotiating how to be a couple and struggle to give each other the space and support they need to grow.
With this new adventure, Kumble wanted to increase the comedy as well as the stakes
Not only is Abby considering an annulment, but there’s conflict and temptation at every turn … not to mention a possible run-in with the mob.
“We throw every element against them that we can,” Kumble says. “It’s really about a leap of faith.”
“The main obstacles that Abby and Travis face are him coming to terms with (the fact that) he’s going to have to grow and be open in their relationship, and for Abby to not run away from her problems but face them,” Gardner says.
As far as the physical obstacles, they include everything from a wrestling match to angry roosters to a mud fight. “It was the craziest thing that I’ve had to do, but we had fun,” Gardner says of the mud scene. “One of my favorite moments was when Roger just belly-flopped into the mud and started digging in it with us to show us what he wanted. It was hilarious, and I love that he was willing to get dirty with his cast.”
“There’s a lot of fun physical things in this movie,” says North, who got to crawl around with roosters and a stunt with a football. “I got hit by that football probably ten times by the end of the day,” he says, laughing.
Beautiful Wedding reunites Kumble with cinematographer Theo van de Sande, who worked on the director’s first film, 1999’s Cruel Intentions, as well as with production designer Britt Doughty, who worked with him on the TV series Suits.
Kumble notes that directing a screenplay he also wrote allows the actors a certain amount of freedom in front of the camera: “We’ll run the scene, and if I’m liking it, we’ll stick close to it – but if I’m like, ‘This isn’t working as well,’ I can grab the actors and go, ‘Let’s rewrite it,’” he says.
As a result, the actors are able to play to their strengths and better connect to the material – and the fun they’re having translates onscreen.
“On the first movie there was a lot of collaboration, so by the time the second movie came around, Roger knew who he was writing for, and you can see it,” Barer says. “There’s really a lot of ourselves in these characters, too.”
The film will keep viewers laughing with Travis and Abby, but it also has plenty of heart.
“The scenes I enjoy are sometimes the small, intimate moments – they’re not necessarily the craziest scenes,” Kumble says. “But any chance I get to work with Dylan and Ginny is just a joy.”
So, can fans expect more “Trabby” in the future? “We’ll see,” Kumble teases. “My fingers are crossed.”
Roger Kumble – Director, Writer and Producer
Roger Kumble began his career as a playwright in 1993 with the Hollywood satire Pay or Play, which garnered him the LA Weekly Award for Best Comic Writing. His second play, 1997’s d girl, starring David Schwimmer, earned him four Drama-Logue Awards. In 2003, Kumble completed his Hollywood trilogy with the critically acclaimed Turnaround, again starring David Schwimmer, which sold out its entire run in Los Angeles. His 2011 play, Girls Talk, was a satire of L.A. private schools and was mentioned by the L.A. Times as one of the best plays of that year.
Kumble made his feature film directorial debut with 1999’s Sony Pictures box-office hit Cruel Intentions, his adaptation of Choderlos De Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon, and Selma Blair. He followed with the Sony Pictures comedy The Sweetest Thing, starring Cameron Diaz and Christina Applegate; New Line Cinema’s Just Friends, starring Ryan Reynolds and Anna Faris; Disney’s College Road Trip starring Martin Lawrence; Furry Vengeance, Netflix’s Falling in Love and Voltage Pictures’ After We Collided, which was one of the most profitable films of 2021. He directed, produced, and wrote the screenplay for 2023’s Beautiful Disaster.
