Boss Baby sequel to force us to contemplate what an Adult Boss Baby might look like
If there’s an animated film that seemed less likely to spawn a franchise than Dreamworks’ The Boss Baby—a movie in which Alec Baldwin is a magic baby who acts like a businessman because he drinks special milk, in direct competition with Steve Buscemi, who is playing a former boss baby who wants to make immortal puppies so that people will no longer have children—then we’d be hard-pressed to name it. (Oh, uh, spoilers for The Boss Baby, we guess.) And yet, the 2017 film is already well on its way to seizing that multi-platform crown: In addition to its decent box office performance back in the day, the film has also spawned a three-season animated series over on Netflix, with JP Karliak taking over the title role. (There’s even an interactive episode where you, dear reader, can achieve humanity’s greatest dream of controlling a baby who is also a boss.) And now, the fatal blow: Deadline reports that a full-fledged Boss Baby sequel is now in the works, with Baldwin returning to portray an Adult Boss Baby, a concept that, in a more perfect universe, would only crop up in the most banned of DeviantArt content tags.
Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow are also set to return for The Boss Baby: Family Business, once again portraying a pair of parents so dopey they never notice that their one-year-old child carries a briefcase and wears a suit. James Marsden, meanwhile, will be stepping in to the role of Tim, who, in the film’s future timeline, has grown estranged from his Boss Adult brother, even though we had one whole entire fucking Boss Baby movie about how much they actually love each other. Newcomers to the cast include Eva Longoria, Ariana Greenblatt, and Jeff Goldblum, playing a mysterious educator who’s probably going to turn out to be the villain of the piece. (In so far as every character who participates in the Boss Baby cinematic universe is not already a villain in their own way.) The new star of the show, though, will be Amy Sedaris, playing Tina, Ted’s baby daughter, who is also a Boss Baby. Girlboss Baby, here we come.
That being said: An Amy Sedaris Boss Baby is a lot more palatable to us than Alec Baldwin Boss Baby ever was—especially since, when considered on a continuum with Strangers With Candy, it really does posit her as the Benjamin Button of the funny Hollywood weirdos set, steadily getting younger with every role. Family Business is being directed by Tom McGrath, who also perpetrated the first film; it’s set to arrive in theaters in March 2021.