By Kate Rodger
Fans of comedian Will Ferrell spend their lives counting down between each of his new films, and his latest The Campaign has just hit Kiwi screens.
The comedy, harvesting the plentiful comic pastures of the American political system, has just opened in the US too, and Ferrell says this being election year, the timing could not be better.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy has become a cult hit for so many Ferrell fans and it seems we're not alone in our Anchorman love affair.
Ferrell says Ron Burgundy is the character most dear to his heart, saying it “sticks out the most”.
And hard to imagine now but Ron Burgundy almost never got his big screen debut.
“We had 10 or 11 studios turn us down in one day when we first had the script… So the fact it has the cult following it does, is the reason why we're making a sequel.”
Shooting on that sequel starts next early next year, but right now he's campaigning for a very different movie.
The Campaign is perfectly timed for election year in the US. It is an R-rated comedy which takes no political prisoners in its mission to mock the process and its politicians.
Ferrell stars opposite fellow comedian Zach Galafianakis as two witless politicians campaigning for congress.
As outrageous as the comedy gets, even Ferrell admits it’s crazy how close to the real thing they get.
“We've had a lot of material to choose from two, four, six, eight years. So it was fun to finally capitalise on all that.
“It’s funny and sad at the same time that we're not that far from these sort of tactics.”
The million-dollar question though? Who's funnier in the film, Ferrell or Galafianakis?
“There was an independent study done, so this is not me boasting, you can look it up. But I was found to be 64 percent funnier than Zach.”
Hard to argue with statistics like that.
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