Johnny Knoxville has confirmed that Jackass will return to cinema screens this summer, so here are some facts to refresh your mind about the iconic show.
In surprise news, Johnny Knoxville has confirmed on Instagram that Jackass is returning to cinemas for the first time in four years.
Johnny’s post read: “Well a wang dang and hot damn doodle, we are starting the year off with a bang. We wanted to let you know that this summer Jackass is back!! We will see you in theaters June 26th. More to come but wanted you to hear it from us first.
The last time we saw Johnny and co on screen was in 2022’s Jackass Forever, which itself followed on 12 years from the third Jackass movie outing, Jackass 3D.
We don’t know any more details about the movie, such as whether the old Jackass crew – including Steve-O, Dave Englund, Chris Pontius and Wee Man – or some of the newer members such as Rachel Wolfson, will be returning, as yet.
However, much will be revealed before June 26, but you can probably assume that the film will be more of the same outrageous, dangerous and often painful – and painfully funny – content that they are known for.
Ahead of that, here are six facts to refresh your mind about Jackass.
It started out on MTV
Jackass launched itself on a largely unsuspecting world in 2000, when the show debuted on MTV. The show itself grew out of Johnny Knoxville’s idea to test self-defence equipment on himself for a magazine article.
While the show was hugely popular, it only ran for three seasons and 25 episodes between 2000 and 2001.
Most of the crew came from the skateboarding world
Johnny ended up pitching his article idea to Big Brother magazine, a skateboarding magazine. Jeff Tremaine was the editor of the magazine, and he would become a co-creator of the show. Chris Pontius was a writer for the magazine. Meanwhile, Steve-O and Jason ‘Wee Man’ Acuna were well known skateboarding personalities who had featured in Big Brother.
Bam Margera and Ryan Dunn were part of a skateboarding crew called the CKY Crew, who made videos of skateboarding stunts.
Finally, Preston Lacy and Ehren McGhehey got roped into it by being mates with Johnny Knoxville and Dave Englund.
The 2022 movie was meant to end it
Once the Jackass show ended in 2001, in 2002 the crew reconvened for Jackass: the Movie, which they said at the time was a “farewell” for fans of the show. By taking on the movie format, they were not subject to the usual censors, meaning they could do bigger and more vulgar stunts than they were allowed to on TV.
Fans loved it, of course, and while the Jackass crew then went their separate ways on their own projects, it wasn’t too long before they came back to make another movie.
Brad Pitt is a famous fan
Jackass garnered some celebrity fans in its run, including Brad Pitt, who ended up featuring on a show. Brad was friends with Spike Jonze, one of the co-creators of Jackass, and when Brad said he wanted to be on the show, it was quickly arranged for him to be included.
The resulting stunt – a staged ‘kidnapping’ of Brad – went onto be one of the crew’s most famous stunts. Brad also donned a monkey suit to cause chaos in another sketch.
A man called Jack Ass tried to sue
Jackass probably gave MTV’s lawyers sleepless nights with their antics – hence everything was plastered with warnings to ‘not try this at home’. So it was probably inevitable that someone would try and sue them – but when it did happen, it was for an unexpected reason. It turned out that a man called Jack Ass sued Viacom – which owns MVT – for allegedly plagarising his game and demanding $10 million in damages.
Jack had legally changed his name to the moniker as part of his campaign against drunk driving. However, the case was thrown out of court.
The crew actually had rules
While Jackass looked anarchic and that they’d do anything on camera, this wasn’t the case. As mentioned, the TV censors would often get involved with the MTV show and put a stop to certain stunts on safety and/or taste and decency grounds. However, the crew themselves had their own rules and limits. For instance, Steve-O drew the line at any stunt that would put his spine in danger, while Johnny avoided cold water. Bam Margera meanwhile didn’t like being naked, and also preferred to avoid bulls. Chris Pontius also summed things up saying he didn’t want to do anything mean to anyone – it was only meant to be mean to them.
