Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) on Netflix
In 1975 San Diego, Ron Burgundy anchors the top-rated newscast on KVWN Channel 4 alongside Brian Fantana, Champ Kind and Brick Tamland. Then the station hires Veronica Corningstone.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.1/10405,055 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes66%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ron Burgundy anchors the news at KVWN Channel 4 in San Diego, where his program has held the highest ratings in the city for five years. His friends fill the rest of the team: Brian Fantana reports from the field, Champ Kind covers sports, and Brick Tamland gives the weather. Station director Ed Harken tells them the ratings lead has held, and the group throws a party, where Ron tries and fails to pick up a blonde woman. Ed then announces that the station has been forced to hire her: Veronica Corningstone. The team's attempts to seduce her come to nothing, and she consents to a professional tour of the city alongside Ron.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film began with an interview Will Ferrell saw with a 1970s anchorman talking about how sexist newsmen had been. According to Adam McKay, what caught Ferrell was the man's tone of voice.
- An early draft was a parody of the survival film Alive, with Ron Burgundy crashing the news team's plane and the survivors chased by orangutans throwing ninja stars. Adam McKay says one version had a musical number with sharks; Paul Thomas Anderson, then set to produce, was so taken aback that he left.
- The film first revolved around hippie bank robbers called The Alarm Clock, but test audiences disliked it and Ferrell blamed the uncomfortable lampooning of the Patty Hearst kidnapping. Much was rewritten and reshot around the panda story, and the discarded version became a separate DVD film, Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie.
- Almost none of San Diego is really San Diego. The brief aerial shots even take in downtown buildings that had not been built in the 1970s, and the film was mostly shot on sets in Los Angeles, Glendale and Long Beach dressed to look like the city.
- Ron Burgundy's look may have been modeled on Harold Greene, a real San Diego anchor at KCST-TV and KGTV, while retired anchor Mort Crim of KYW-TV in Philadelphia and WDIV in Detroit said Ferrell had chosen him as the character's inspiration.
- Christina Applegate's Veronica Corningstone was modeled on Jessica Savitch, a Philadelphia newsreader who went on to a prominent role at NBC News.
- John C. Reilly does not appear in the finished film, but he read at an early session and impressed Will Ferrell so much that a part was written for him in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.
- Ron Burgundy's sign-off became a real newsroom farewell: the BBC's Andrew Marr in 2021 and Sky News's Dermot Murnaghan in 2023 both ended the last broadcasts of their 21-year and 15-year tenures with a nod to "Stay classy, San Diego".
