Nearly twenty years after its original release, Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild! is returning at a moment that feels politically charged, culturally reflective, and defiantly unapologetic by design.
For writer-director Todd Stephens, whose earlier films Gypsy 83 and Edge of Seventeen established him as a deeply empathetic chronicler of queer longing and identity, the outrageous Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild! represented a deliberate and rebellious pivot. Made during the Bush era and now reemerging amid another conservative political moment, the film doubles as a sex-positive Spring Break farce and a vivid time capsule of pre-smartphone queer life, when community was built in physical spaces, and shame had no seat at the table.
Breaking Glass Pictures is re-releasing the beloved cult LGBTQ+ comedy on March 3, 2026, inviting longtime fans and a whole new generation back to a gloriously chaotic, pre-Grindr, pre-influencer era when Spring Break was about friendship, freedom, and very questionable decisions that definitely stayed in Fort Lauderdale.
Loud, messy, sex-positive, and proudly queer, the film reunites fan favorites Andy, Nico, Jarod, and Griff as a carefree beach getaway spirals into the no-holds-barred “Gays Gone Wild!” competition, where the goal is simple: hook up with as many guys as possible to earn the utterly ridiculous title of Miss Gay Gone Wild. Packed with fearless camp and iconic cameos from RuPaul, Scott Thompson, Willam Belli, Colton Ford, and an infamously unhinged Perez Hilton subplot, the film stands as a perfect time capsule of late-2000s gay nightlife and pop-culture excess, celebrating a shameless, communal queer joy that still hits just as hard today.
In our exclusive interview, Todd reflects on the anger and freedom that fueled the film, why its camp excess feels newly relevant today, and how its celebration of pleasure, messiness, and proudly queer existence has helped it endure as a cult favorite. From lost gay guest houses and legendary cameos to monogamy, rebellion, and the radical act of joy, Todd explains why now is the right time for Another Gay Sequel to go wild all over again.
Another Gay Sequel is being rereleased now, almost two decades after its original debut. Why now? Why did you decide that this would be a good time to rerelease?
The movies were made in a way as like acts of rebellion in a conservative political era. The first movies were made during the Bush administration and it just seemed like, in the horror of the Trump world that we’re living now, it just seemed like it was the right time for crazy raunchy, queer, stupid movies. I don’t know if I answered that, but it’s just to give Donald Trump a heart attack. Yeah. I’ll put it that way.
Looking at the film now, how does it feel to see it described as a time capsule snapshot of that late 2000s era of gay nightlife and culture?
I think it really is a time capsule in the sense that…the interesting thing is that when we were shooting the movie, the iPhone literally came out during production – and we actually got a couple shots of an iPhone in the movie. It was a different world. You know, it was a world where queer people went more to queer safe spaces.
Another Gay Sequel was shot in five different gay guest houses in Fort Lauderdale, and they’re all gone. So many queer spaces are gone, I think in large part because of the smartphone. I teach college freshmen and sophomores, and, actually, younger people kind of long for that more innocent time before the phone when people actually got together and met in person and hung out and stuff like that. I think that that’s kind of part of what these films are about – a queer community, you know?
As you mentioned, the movie is raunchy and it’s camp, and it’s very sex positive. At the time when you made it, you had already made Gypsy 83 and Edge of Seventeen, did you feel that you were pushing boundaries with LGBTQ cinema or you just reflecting the reality that you saw around you at the time?
When I made Another Gay Movie, I was really mad because Gypsy 83 was really hard to sell. It was a film about a queer ally and her queer best friend and their sort of intimate, non-sexual relationship; and distributors said, “I don’t know how to sell this. I don’t know what the movie poster is for this movie.”
Back then, queer movies were pretty much just sold to queer people and we always had this fantasy of movies crossing over to a non-queer audience, but it never happened back then. I was really hurt by how hard it was to get Gypsy 83 distributed. I remember one distributor said, “no one wants to see a fag hag movie” and another one said, “it’s not gay enough.” And I thought, you want something gay? I’m gonna make the gayest, craziest movie you ever saw in your life.
I also wanted to make a spoof and a satire like Scary Movie. I wanted to do the same thing with queer movies, but it really came at a time of me being angry and sort of wanted to rebel and do something, almost like in the spirit of my hero, John Waters. I wanted to shake things up and I knew I was making a polarizing film that some people wouldn’t get. It’s kind of one of those you either love it or hate it kind of things, you know?
The LGBTQ community has evolved dramatically since 2008, like you had mentioned with the phones and dating apps and everything, so what aspects of Another Gay Sequel feel most distant from today, and which still feel surprisingly relevant?
I guess like the phone, but what still feels surprisingly relevant? I think something that queer people always struggle with is like when you get in a relationship, are you going to be monogamous? Are you going to have a more open relationship? And this isn’t just queer people – a lot of us struggle with those questions and we grow up in a world where we’re told that you’re supposed to just find a mate for life and it doesn’t always work that way. That’s really something I was trying to work out at the time. I’ve been in a relationship for many, many years and I really was trying to work out what does it all mean? And I think that that’s something that is still very relevant today.
In the sequel, the horndog Andy character goes to Fort Lauderdale to have as much sex as he can and winds up finding somebody that he falls in love with, so he goes on a different path. Whereas the couple who were the friends who became boyfriends in the original film try to open their relationship up and it doesn’t go well at first and then they find a happy medium where they are going to do things with other people, but only together, so I think the questions of monogamy, promiscuity and all of that are as relevant today as they ever were, especially in a setting like spring break.
You’ve got obviously a lot of celebrity cameos in the movie, like a pre-Drag Race RuPaul, Lady Bunny and Scott Thompson and they feel even more iconic in hindsight. How did those collaborations come together, and did you have a sense at the time that they’d age into something legendary?
I’m not surprised that they aged into something legendary because they were legendary people to me. I mean, I always looked up to RuPaul and Scott Thompson was my comic idol and Lady Bunny is a legend in New York City with Wigstock. They got involved because they loved the first movie. They really vibed with Another Gay Movie, which had its own cameos, like Graham Norton and such, so it was a little bit in the spirit of disaster movies from the seventies where you had an all-star cast, but I basically wanted to pay love and respect to my idols.
Both of the films have become cult favorites. When did you first realize that these movies had found a lasting audience beyond their initial release?
I’ve had people like that maybe are in their thirties now, or late thirties, come up to me and said that Another Gay Movie helped them come out, which I was like, oh no, really? Oh my God. Wow. I mean, there’s a really sweet love story in there between Griff and Jarod and they felt seen and had a film that they could watch when they were younger. It was that crazy, dumb, sex comedy that that non-queer people take for granted, you know?
I also think a reason why it stuck around is people don’t make films like this anymore. I mean, in these kind of comedies, you have to ride the line and sometimes you cross it and maybe go too far with certain things, but that’s just kind of the nature of comedy sometimes and I think that nowadays, nobody’s making crazy comedies like that because you can get canceled or crucified or whatever, you know? So, I think that it’s a type of movie that should come back. My students are telling me that we need to bring back these crazy movies, and I said, well, you should do it. I think that’s another reason why they’re still alive is because there’s not many of them being made today
Looking back on your career so far, where does, where do these two films sit for you personally as a filmmaker and a storyteller – because you kind of took a big a pivot from Gypsy 83 and Edge of Seventeen?
I’m a Gemini, so I feel like I have these two sides of my personality. One, the main side is more the dramedy, heartfelt, you know, Edge of Seventeen/Gypsy 83/Swan Song kind of vibe. But then I do have this crazy, rebellious side. I don’t know if I’d ever make a film like this again, although I never had more fun making these movies in my life, you know, because there was no fear and none of the characters were struggling with coming out or agonizing about who they were. They were all queer – and proudly queer. So maybe that’s something that in terms of representation for new generations is like there was something new and fresh about a queer movie where being gay wasn’t the conflict – we were just all free and flying in this fantasy world that we created.
I had dinner with three of the leads from the original movie a couple weeks ago when I was in LA. And you know, people always ask us, when is there going to be a third one? And I don’t know. I mean, maybe now in the Trump era is the time to bring it back, you know?
What are you planning on working on next?
The main thing is I’m doing a biopic about Mae West, who has always been my idol. It’s the origin story of one of the most iconic female actors in history. I watched Another Gay Movie again recently. I hadn’t watched it in many years, but one of the thank yous I gave was to Mae West. So that’s what I’m hopefully working on. We’ve attached somebody to star in it, but I can’t say who it is yet. But, you know, it takes a lot of money to make a period piece, so we’re in the fundraising process of that but it’s called Sex with Mae West.
Finally, if you could send one message to audiences revisiting the film or discovering it for the first time, what do you hope they take away from it?
I hope they take away a spirit of no shame, that you don’t need to be ashamed of who you are, no matter what you get off on sexually. I think that it’s a very sex positive film and there’s no judgment – whether you want to be monogamous or promiscuous or whatever you’re into.
I just feel like I’m proud of the fact that there’s no shame or fear in the movie and it’s hard not to feel that way nowadays, you know? I hope that they find within the film that spirit that you can celebrate who you are, no matter who you are and you don’t need to be ashamed or apologize for it.
Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild! will be available on all major streaming platforms on March 3.
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