Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann to reprise Knocked Up roles in Judd Apatow's next film

By Sean O'Neal | January 7, 2011 | 3:39pm

Aux Features Film

Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann to reprise Knocked Up roles in Judd Apatow's next film

Judd Apatow, comedy’s kookiest cuckold, is set to pair his wife Leslie Mann off with Paul Rudd again for his next film, and although Apatow tells Hitfix it is neither prequel nor sequel to 2007’s Knocked Up, Mann and Rudd will be reprising their roles as that movie’s delightfully bickering married couple Debbie and Pete. There’s still no indication of the overall plot, but Apatow did say it is “a story from Pete and Debbie’s current life,” adding, “People really responded to their characters and problems. I felt like there was a lot of ground I could explore with them.”

Which sounds like a sequel, technically, but we suppose Apatow can call it whatever he wants—and given that his films explore the same casual, everyday mundanity as TV sitcoms, perhaps a more apt term would be “spinoff” anyway, akin to how Get Him To The Greek related to Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Also unclear is whether the film will feature actual appearances by Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl’s characters, or whether Apatow will go to the ye olde sitcom well of explaining their off-screen absence—via a phone call from Hillman College, for example, or announcing that their plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan—but you can bet that Apatow and Mann’s kids are already negotiating their points on the back end.