Anchorman 2 to feature musical numbers

'Anchorman 2' director Adam McKay has revealed that the sequel to the celebrated Will Ferrell newsroom comedy will feature musical numbers.

Speaking to The Playlist, McKay said that he's planning to expand on Ron Burgundy and the Channel 4 news team's rendition of the Starland Vocal Band's 'Afternoon Delight' from the first film with 'whole sequences'.

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“There will be some music in 'Anchorman 2' for sure,” he said. “We have some songs already written. We were going to do 'Anchorman 2' as a Broadway musical first, for like six months and then go shoot the movie. That was our initial idea.

“The music sequences we have done - we did ‘Afternoon Delight’ [in 'Anchorman'], Adam Scott and his family singing ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ [in 'Step Brothers'], we did a whole song for ‘Talladega Nights‘ that got cut out, a big, big musical number - we always do it live on the set.

“And my thing is, if the actors get freaked out, don’t sweat it, we can always re-record it later. And every time we’ve done it, we end up using the live track from the recording. We’ll probably do it the same way in this.”

McKay has also gone a little into what we might expect from the film plot-wise too.

“Even thought it's going to be a big silly movie, it's all about the rise of the new media and 24 hour news cycle, and there's a lot of interesting points to make about that while being silly,” he said.

“It's just funny that Americans have to contend with 2000 channels, and 60 different specific news sources, and the confusion that it creates, and the junk that we get to see is hilarious. That's what we're always kinda looking for, what's the point of view that's got life to it and plays.”

There's no release date yet, but it's expected to arrive some time in 2013.