As Happy Gilmore 2 is gearing up to premiere on Netflix on July 25, Adam Sandler has opened up about having to rewrite the film following the demise of Carl Weathers.
As per his interview with Collider, Derick "Chubbs" Peterson, the character played by Weathers in Happy Gilmore (1996), was a part of the sequel before the actor breathed his last at 76 in 2024.
Sandler, who will be seen as Happy Gilmore again, said, “We had a painful change. Carl Weathers had a massive part. I would talk to Carl, and we were excited, and then Carl passed away. We had to rewrite a lot of the stuff, including what the story was. We made a lot of nice references to how great Chubbs was in the movie. That was the biggest change.”
In the initial drafts of Happy Gilmore 2, Weathers had a large part to play, said Sandler in the interview. “In the first version that we came up with, he had a son. He was coming back to me a lot in my dreams, and he had a son who was mad at Happy for causing the death of Daddy.”
In Happy Gilmore, Chubbs was a pro golfer whose hand was chewed off by an alligator, forcing his retirement from the sport. He then uses a wooden hand, as seen in the film.
Apart from Sandler, the returning cast of the film includes Julie Bowen, Christopher McDonald, and Ben Stiller. The incoming cast of Happy Gilmore 2, helmed by Kyle Newacheck, comprises Bad Bunny, Sandler's daughters Sadie and Sunny, and Travis Kelce. The actors will be joined by professional golfers Scottie Scheffler, John Daly, Rory McIlroy, and Bryson DeChambeau.
Sandler, Tim Herlihy, Robert Simonds, and Jack Giarraputo are returning as producers, with Sandler and Herlihy co-writing the screenplay, just as they did for the first film. Happy Gilmore, originally released by Universa, became a beloved cult classic. The original 1996 film, directed by Dennis Dugan, was pivotal in establishing Sandler’s career. The plot followed Happy Gilmore, a hot-headed hockey player who unexpectedly excels at golf in order to save his grandmother’s house.
