20 facts you might not know about 'Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy'

The first attempt from McKay and Ferrell to get a movie together was for a movie called “August Blowout.” Ferrell has said this movie was a “Glengarry Glen Ross” style movie about a car dealership. The film didn’t get made, but a lot of people in Hollywood liked it. That included Paul Thomas Anderson, who said he would produce a film written by McKay and Ferrell, just not “August Blowout.”

Looking for a new inspiration for a script, Ferrell saw an interview with a news anchorman from the 1970s. He really appreciated the “tone of voice” of the anchorman, and that was enough to get Ferrell interested in making a movie about such a character.

McKay and Ferrell got a little adventurous with their first news anchor script. It was a parody of Alive about a group of news people who survive a plane crash in the wilderness. Also, they are attacked by orangutans with ninja stars. Also, there was a musical number with sharks. This script was so bizarre that Anderson rescinded his offer to produce the movie.

To land on the style of Ron Burgundy, Ferrell looked to the past. Burgundy’s based, at least aesthetically, on Harold Greene, a real anchorman in San Diego in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Given what a buffoon Burgundy is, you’d think nobody would want to fess up to inspiring the character. That didn’t stop Mort Crim, though. The former anchorman with stints in Detroit and Philadelphia claimed to have inspired Ron Burgundy. Apparently, his former co-anchor Jessica Savitch did inspire Veronica Corningstone.

Before Christina Applegate got the role, Amy Adams, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Leslie Mann all auditioned for the part. Perhaps it is a bit of an upset that Applegate beat out Mann for the role. Mann’s husband Judd Apatow was a producer on the film, after all, and he is a fan of casting his wife in his movies.

It’s hard to imagine anybody but Steve Carell playing Brick Tamland at this point. However, apparently James Spader was considered for the part as well. Interestingly, Spader would go on to effectively replace Carell on The Office.

Apatow and Ferrell wanted Ed Harris to play Ed Harken, but Fred Willard ended up with the role. Alec Baldwin was in the running for the cameo role of Frank Vitchard. Bob Odenkirk and Ron Livingston, meanwhile, were in the mix to play Brian Fantana.

John C. Reilly was considered for Champ Kind, and even took part in a read-through of the script. He didn’t get the role, but Ferrell and McKay liked working with him. The duo wrote a part for Reilly in Talladega Nights, starting a lengthy working relationship for the two actors.

While San Diego isn’t far from Los Angeles, McKay stayed local to shoot. The only filming of San Diego that was done was aerial shots, and those shots included buildings that weren’t in the city in the 1970s.

When Veronica and the women from the station go out to eat, they dine at a Mexican restaurant called “Escupimos es su Alimento.” Anybody who speaks Spanish is likely skipping that spot, as that name translates to “We Spit in Your Food.”

Baxter the dog has quite the adventure in Anchorman, and he also has a name that any sitcom aficionado can likely recognize. He’s named after Ted Baxter, the vain, foolhardy anchor played by Ted Knight on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Robbins was happy to take a cameo role in the big anchorman fight, but he had a request. He wanted a custom wig made for his character, which he wanted to keep. Apparently, he had the same deal for his cameo in High Fidelity as well. The man likes a custom wig!

The writer listed in the credits for the news stations’ broadcast are Jon Hamm and Adam Scott. Now, these days both Hamm and Scott are famous, Emmy-nominated actors. They were less famous back in 2004. What they were, however, were friends of producer Shauna Robertson, who got their names in the film as an Easter egg.

These days, it’s hard to remember a time when Ferrell wasn’t a movie star. However, Anchorman was McKay’s directorial debut, and Ferrell was far from a proven star. The film’s success helped solidify both of their careers. Off of a budget of $26 million, the movie made $90.6 million worldwide.

At the time, reviews were mixed on this silly, slapdash comedy of Anchorman. The movie only has a 66 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. These days, though, it’s considered a classic comedy. Bravo had the film on its list of the 100 best comedies, Time Out had the film sixth on a similar list, and Empire called it straight-up the 113th best movie of any kind.

McKay liked to keep his comedies fast and loose and allow for a lot of improvisation, something producer Apatow is also known for. So much was shot for Anchorman, they had enough for an entirely different movie. No, really. It’s called Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie. The film is built around an entirely abandoned subplot about a group of bank robbers called “The Alarm Clock.”

In 2013, McKay and Ferrell would bring us the overstuffed, slightly bloated, but still entertaining sequel Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. This would prove to be a last hurrah for McKay and Ferrell as a duo. McKay’s next film would be The Big Short, and he would become a more serious filmmaker. The two would then have a falling out after Reilly, and not Ferrell, was cast as Jerry Buss in HBO’s Winning Time, produced by McKay.

In 2019, Burgundy returned to a new medium. Ferrell launched The Ron Burgundy Podcast with iHeart Radio. It proved quite popular, and the show entered its fifth season in 2022.

When Ferrell was in college, he actually majored in sports broadcasting. However, a future in Champ’s line of work wasn’t for him. While in college, Ferrell got an internship in the sports department at a local television network, but he hated it. After graduating, Ferrell had no interest in pursuing journalism or working in broadcasting.