Netflix has officially announced Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later. According to Deadline, the eight-episode series will take place after both Netflix’s prequel series Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp and the 2001 cult film both are based on.
David Wain and Michael Showalter’s movie Wet Hot American Summer focused on the last day at summer camp in 1981, while the 2015 prequel First Day Of Camp centered on the first day of that summer. The sequel series Ten Years Later will, as the title indicates, take place ten years later.
The time jump for the sequel series makes perfect sense. One of the running jokes of the prequel series was that everyone was roughly ten years older than the young camp counselors they were playing back when they first portrayed them in 2001. The jump also comes from a scene in the original film, which Netflix used part of to make the sequel series announcement. The scene involves a bunch of the counselors getting together to discuss meeting up ten years later and not being able to decide when or where they’d want to meet.
Wain and Showalter, both of whom wrote the movie and the prequel series, are back writing again for Ten Years Later. Wain is also set to direct all eight episodes again as he did with First Day Of Camp.
Netflix has not confirmed who of the original A-list cast from the film or the prequel series will return, which included Showalter, Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, Christopher Meloni, Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Zak Orth, Ken Marino, Joe Lo Truglio, Molly Shannon, Marguirite Moreau, Michael Ian Black and Elizabeth Banks.
Even though it isn’t a formal announcement of casting, in a recent interview with Business Insider, Michael Ian Black said, “I haven’t talked to David Wain and Michael Showalter too much about it in terms of what they’re thinking about storylines. But as far as I know, everybody is doing it. I don’t think they’d want to do it if the vast majority of the original cast weren’t on board.”
While the original cast being back is the most important thing, it will also be fascinating to see which new people get cast in Ten Years Later. First Day Of Camp made notable additions to the Wet Hot family, adding Michael Cera, Randall Park, Lake Bell, Jason Schwartzman, Paul Scheer, Jordan Peele, Kristen Wiig, John Slattery, Rich Sommer, Michaela Watkins, Chris Pine and Jon Hamm.