Johnny Knoxville walks back the whole "final" Jackass film thing

No one would blame Johnny Knoxville for retiring Jackass after putting his body on the line for two decades. He’s had a dangerous number of concussions, and was most recently hospitalized after a run-in with a bull on the set of Jackass Forever. Therefore it came as no surprise when writer Sam Schube reported in his GQ profile that the stuntman confirmed the film would “be his last contribution to the franchise.”

Except that turned out to be definitely not true, which probably also doesn’t come as a surprise. In May, it was reported that Paramount+ was developing a new Jackass series with the original creators (not named, but that’s Knoxville, Jeff Tremaine, and Spike Jonze). So what is the truth?

“We never said whether it was or wasn’t [the final film]. That got written somewhere and people ran with it,” Knoxville says in a new Variety interview. “If we did continue, we would lean on the younger cast more and the old guys would take a little step back but still be a part of it. I would have to step back because my neurologist said I can’t have any more concussions.”

The Reboot star doesn’t allude to any development over at Paramount+, but it’s clear he’s neither handing over the reins nor putting them down entirely. (Except for literal reins, if there are any bulls involved. And while we’re on the subject, Knoxville admits he had “three or four” other stunts planned “on the same level as the bull” that he had to scrap from the movie: “Even if I had gotten through the bull, I wouldn’t have gotten out of the others. One of them would have taken me out.”)

And so, the legacy of Jackass is still being written. Though if you ask Knoxville where it stands now, he says, “I never even think about it unless someone asks me about it in an interview. That’s not for me to answer. It belongs to everybody now. However you perceive Jackass is fine by me. The toothpaste is out of the tube.”