Rebel Wilson and Anna Kendrick return in the sequel to comedy musical Pitch Perfect

THE sequel to the hit comedy musical Pitch Perfect is taking shape in the US Deep South, with hilarious Rebel Wilson and Hunger Games’ Elizabeth Banks calling the shots.

IT’S a typically hot and steamy summer’s day at Louisiana State University. Inside a theatre that looks oddly familiar, all hell is breaking loose.

Aussie comedian Rebel Wilson is twirling doughnuts on her fingers. Brittany Snow is prancing up and down a set of mirrored stairs under the watchful gaze of Usher’s choreographer. Anna Kendrick is awkwardly negotiating a stripper’s pole. There’s breakdancing, chair-dancing, aerial stunts and surveying it all — part cheerleader, part ringleader — is a dressed down Elizabeth Banks.

If the setting looks familiar, it’s hardly a surprise. Thanks to the 2012 sleeper hit musical comedy Pitch Perfect, the LSU campus is now better known to millions around the world as Barden University, and the auditorium is the very same one that a cappella group the Barden Bellas used to turn their ramshackle rabble of underdog misfits into a crack, close-harmony singing outfit.

It’s week four of shooting on the sequel, due out next May, and all the main players are back: Wilson’s Fat Amy, Kendrick’s Beca, Snow’s Chloe as well as some new faces, including Hailee Steinfeld. Best known for her acting role as Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games movies, Banks has stepped up to direct the sequel, because original director Jason Moore was unavailable due to a scheduling conflict. After the outpouring of love that greeted Pitch Perfect, Banks freely admits the stakes are high, especially given it’s her first feature film.

“It’s never how I imagined my directorial debut would go,” she says on a rare break from filming. “I was expecting a little, tiny indie movie with low expectations — instead I took over something that’s beloved and I feel a lot of pressure to deliver something that’s great again.”

But everyone agrees the movie is in good hands. Having found the book that inspired the first movie — the story and characters rang true from her own college days — as well as producing it and starring as a cappella commentator Gail Abernathy-McKadden, Pitch Perfect has always been Banks’s baby.

“She has kind of spearheaded this whole thing from the very beginning, so her directing now obviously makes sense,” says Snow. “You can see her passion for each of us and for the story so it’s really cool to see her go from producer to director seamlessly because even as a producer she was very vocal. She is obviously a natural director and she has been really great.”

The filmmakers and cast of Pitch Perfect 2 are aware that, as with all sequels, they are treading the fine line between retaining what is familiar and loved about the original, without repeating themselves. The feeling is particularly acute given the broad range of fans of all ages who embraced the first movie. The unheralded musical comedy made a tidy $113 million at the box office from a $17 million budget but the word of mouth and Cups phenomenon meant it found a new, totally unexpected life on DVD and video on demand. Producer Paul Brooks says he was stunned by some of the places the first film found an audience, including American Navy ships, which apparently screened it night after night for crews.

“It was massively discovered far in excess proportion to the actual box office,” he says. “It was like the favourite magazine that’s in the dentist’s office and has been sitting there for a year — everybody reads it and it’s so well-thumbed and it just stays in the office because everyone keeps reading it.”

Not everyone was immediately convinced though. When an exhausted Kendrick sits down for a chat at the end of a long day’s shooting involving an elaborate gag involving Rebel Wilson and a fake tongue, she admits to being nervous about returning to the role.

“That prosthetic tongue looked good,” she says. “I kinda wanted to try it but then I figured that would be inappropriate and I would get Rebel Wilson’s cooties.”

She says was asked a lot whether there would be a sequel — but she just couldn’t see it. Once the ball started rolling though, it was the thought of not being part of the all-girl gang again that spurred her into action.

“We got so lucky with the first one turning out as well as it did and when they said they were going to do it (the sequel) I was so sad at the idea of everybody being there and me not being in it,” she says. “I would have had such major FOMO (fear of missing out) that I kind of had to sort it out.”

As much as Pitch Perfect was an ensemble film, it was Kendrick and Wilson who emerged as the standouts.

Whereas Kendrick was a known quantity after parts in the Twilight series and her Oscar-nominated role in Up In the Air, the first film showcased her musical theatre roots that have since been put to good use in the coming all-star musical, Into the Woods.

And Wilson’s brash, hilarious Fat Amy cemented a reputation as a hot comedic talent that had only really been glimpsed in her breakout movie, Bridesmaids, and led to her own network TV show (the now cancelled Super Fun Night) as well as roles in the coming Night At the Museum 3 and Sacha Baron Cohen’s next comedy, Grimsby. Wilson originally auditioned with a Lady Gaga song and an American accent but when director Moore heard her normal speaking voice once shooting had started he badgered her to make the character Australian.

“It took the director two days to convince me and then I was like ‘OK, Fat Amy is Australian, I am going to make her from Tasmania and put in a few jokes about that’ and we completely changed the whole character, literally a few days before the filming of the first movie,” she says. “Some of the singing I had already recorded in an Australian accent, so we had to go back and change it.”

Banks was blown away not just by Wilson’s commitment but also that the Aussie actor could see what the character and the movie could do for her fledgling Hollywood career, despite the less than flattering name.

“She never shied away from that name,” says Banks. “A lot of actors you can’t even send them a script where the character’s name is Fat Amy. That was never an issue for Rebel, she 100 per cent got it — she was the character as if it was created for her.”

While the filmmakers are keeping the plot details under wraps, it would appear that Wilson’s part has been expanded for the sequel.

“I am actually doing all my own aerial stunts in the movie so before coming here I did train for five weeks with a Cirque Du Soleil trainer,” Wilson says. “I don’t want to give away what the stunts are because it’s pretty spectacular and it’s the opening of the movie,” she says. “But in the first movie you saw the Bellas fail at the beginning because Aubrey vomits everywhere and the opening of this second movie just takes that to a whole new level. That’s all I can say about that.”

“My character actually has a love story this time around which is pretty cool. You get a bit more in depth with Fat Amy and what she is going to do when she graduates college and how that affects her. I think the audience will really like it.”

Kendrick is equally tight-lipped about the story of Pitch Perfect 2 but her hints and the recent trailer suggest that the Bellas have had a spectacular fall from grace and must regain their mojo and love for music to see off a new a capella challenge from a Kraftwerk-esque group of Germans.

“The group has gone a little too far from its roots,” Kendrick says. “We got kind of funky fresh in the first one and in the beginning of this one you see that, while it’s good and polished in some ways, it’s just gone a little bit too far. So it’s about rediscovering their sound. Beca is a little checked out because she wants to be going on to bigger and better things and she doesn’t really see the benefit of giving a ton of energy to the group any more. But you know, it’s about friends and stuff.”

Pitch Perfect opens next May.