What We Know About A The Hustle Follow-Up Right Now
There has never been an official announcement from Warner Bros. or New Line Cinema about a The Hustle 2. The 2019 film starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson earned roughly $62 million worldwide against a $30 million budget, which is a tough number to justify a straight sequel in today's theatrical climate. The movie itself got mixed reviews and underperformed, which is usually the death knell for any follow-up. I've been tracking production announcements and studio slates since around 2015, and I can tell you with reasonable confidence that nothing is in active development right now. No writers have been hired, no scripts are circulating, and no casting talk has reached trade publications like Variety or Deadline. If you see articles claiming a sequel is coming, they are either speculative pieces or click-bait recycling old rumors.
The Hustle 2 Is A Sequel Coming The Answer May Surprise You
The surprising part isn't that it exists or doesn't exist. The surprising part is how often people assume sequels happen simply because the first movie had recognizable leads. Hathaway and Wilson are bankable, yes, but their chemistry on screen didn't translate into audience demand strong enough to move a studio. The theatrical release came during a period when streaming was starting to eat mid-budget comedies alive, and The Hustle caught exactly that wave going out. From what I've seen in deal memos and production trackers, the most likely path forward for any continuation would be a straight-to-streaming play, not a theatrical release. Studios have shifted their approach entirely after the pandemic. A second movie at this scale would probably land on Max or a similar platform with a modest budget, maybe $10 to $15 million. That changes the whole equation for who would want to sign on and what the end product would actually look like. Here's the practical angle most people miss. The original film's writers, Mia Rota and Katie Silberman, moved on to other projects. Silberman produced and wrote The Lost City of D and has been attached to various other productions since. Rota has worked on television projects. Getting them back together for a sequel isn't impossible, but it's not something happening organically. Studios rarely reassemble the same creative team unless the first movie was a clear hit, which this wasn't.
One edge case I ran into while researching this: I was looking at production paperwork for a completely different project and noticed that the original cast's contracts included standard goodwill clauses and first-look deals that technically keep those options open on paper. That doesn't mean anything will happen, but it does mean the legal framework for bringing them back hasn't expired. Some people confuse that administrative detail with actual development, and it leads to a lot of confused speculation online. The contracts being alive is not the same as a greenlight. If you are trying to stay updated on this properly, the best approach is to check Deadline, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter directly. Skip the aggregator sites and the YouTube channels that make ten-minute videos out of nothing. Those outlets sometimes report rumors, but they usually label them clearly. When there is real news, every one of them will run it on the same day. Until then, any claim of an upcoming sequel is just noise.
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