Todd Phillips, director of The Hangover, our favourite recent Vegas film, has confirmed that there will indeed be a sequel to the 2009 box office hit and Golden Globe winner.

The making of the sequel has been confirmed by Todd Phillips and Bradley Cooper, who acted in The Hangover. Bradley Cooper got together with costars Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha to brainstorm some ideas for the film, while Todd Phillips waited until there was a location and storyline that the cast and he could agree on to give the go ahead. Cooper has divulged that they are all already extremely excited for the hilarious opening sequence that Phillips came up with.

The Hangover was previously featured on this blog because the film was set in Vegas and featured all sorts of typically, and not so typically, Vegas scenarios, including gambling, attempting to cheat while gambling, as well as winning and, just as quickly, losing obscenely large quantities of money. The film featured a hilarious blend of circumstance and luck that seems to be representative of casino games such as poker and blackjack, therefore making it the perfect plot for a Vegas film. The budget for the film was $35 million but it ended up grossing $270 million just in the US- another gamble that paid off.

It’s rumoured that the sequel will be shot in Thailand, not in Vegas, but the cast will remain the same. Phillips would only consider doing a sequel if the original cast wanted to, stating that he loved making The Hangover and if he made the sequel without the original cast it would be crushed.

Apparently Warner Bros and the cast were already thinking about a sequel even before the first film had been finished being made. Phillips explained:  “We were thinking of sequel ideas when we were shooting, which sounds cocky, but we were doing it more because it was just fun to talk about ideas while hanging out on the set…Two weeks ago I was saying, ‘let’s see how it works out.’ Now that the movie has really connected, it’s something we’re doing for sure.”

Shooting of the sequel could start as early as 2010.

Once in a while, the poker community gets treated to fantastic poker movies such as Rounders, and back in the day we used to get some decent quality movies.

Now, we get nothing. We get the occasional fun scene such as the celebrities playing poker in Oceans 11, but otherwise not much else.

Shark City which the PokerTime office has suddenly got wind of, seems okay. If anyone has seen this gem, let us know.

In other poker related odd news, Ted Moustakis attempted to sue Christies for selling him knock-offs after being told by the actor playing Data that they weren’t the real deal. The items under scrutiny were a $6,600 poker visor, an $11,000 poker table and a $6,000 uniform, all said to have been worn and used by Mr. Moustakis’s favourite Star Trek character, Commander Data. The uniform is said to just be one of many that could have been worn by any number of cast members. The charges against Christies have now been dropped after judges said Moustakis should have just asked for his money back instead of attempting to sue.

Here’s a bit of history behind the game of poker as played on the Starship Enterprise:

Data was first introduced to the game in 2365 and initially believed that all that was required to play the game was a simple mathematical strategy. He was soon to realize that this was not the case and started viewing poker as an interesting forum to use to study human behaviour. Data designed a ‘holodeck’ programme in which he played against Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Stephan Hawking. Data found that he had the advantage of having the ultimate ‘poker face’ because he was incapable of displaying human emotion. He used this advantage when he was sent back in time to San Francisco in the 1890’s and joined a poker game to clean up his opponents and as well as leaving some of them without clothing.

Other Trekkie references to poker:

·         Doctor Mendoza immediately recognized that Commander Riker was a poker player.

·         After playing in a ‘Federation Day’ variant of poker, where two’s, six’s and aces were wild cards, Worf commented that the large number of wild cards made it a “Woman’s Game” because it “supports a weak hand”.

·         While most of the games on the Enterprise-D were played using common clay chips, one game between William T. Riker, Worf, Geordi La Forge and Beverly Crusher was wagered on an unconventional stake: if Beverly won, all of the men would shave their beards, and if any of the men won, Beverly would dye her hair brown. Unfortunately the game was never finished.

·         Geordi was a regular poker player and used his ‘visor’ to read through the cards of his opponents but was adamant that he never used this ability until the hand was over. Yeah right