In 2003, writer Mike White collaborated with Jack Black and director Richard Linklater on the musical comedy School of Rock that later spawned a Nickelodeon series and a Tony-nominated musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
In the original movie, struggling singer Dewey Finn (Black) goes undercover as a substitute teacher for a local prep school in order to earn some quick cash to pay his rent. He pretends to be his best friend and former bandmate, Ned Schneebly (White), and discovers that his students all have gifted musical talents. He teams up with the children to form a band, intent on entering a Battle of the Bands competition to bag its cash prize.
White originally penned the script after living next to Black in Los Angeles, wanting to show off his comedic chops.
“He was starting to get a lot of heat as an actor and he would occasionally give me scripts that had been submitted to him to star in,” White recalled to Viacom in October 2018. “They were invariably these flat comedies or he was, like, the John Belushi guy who gets drunk and falls through a sliding glass door or something. I’m reading these scripts and I was like, ‘I could do better than this.’”
The White Lotus creator continued, “Obviously, music is a big passion of [Black’s]; he has his band Tenacious D. I had the idea of him leading a band of little kids — somehow it just seemed like a funny visual.”
Scroll below to find out what the School of Rock cast has been up to since the movie’s debut:
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