Seth Rogen Says a Pineapple Express Sequel Was Turned Down by Studio: It's a 'Weird Thing'

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Seth Rogen's Pineapple Express could have been a franchise.

Rogen, 38, stopped by SiriusXM's The Howard Stern Show on Wednesday where Howard Stern asked the actor if a sequel to the popular 2008 film would ever see the light of day.

"We tried to make one," Rogen said. "Thanks to the Sony hack, you can actually find the email when Sony killed the movie."

He continued, "It was something we were very open to several years ago, but Sony was not that interested in it."

When Stern asked why the studio wouldn't "jump at the idea of a Pineapple Express 2," Rogen said it was due to budget constraints.

"I think we probably wanted too much money. Studios, they don't like giving away money. Weird thing," the actor said with a laugh.

Pineapple Express starred Rogen, James Franco, Gary Cole and Rosie Perez in a story that follows Rogen’s Dale Denton, a stoner, who goes on the run with his dealer (played by Franco) as a dangerous drug lord and a crooked cop chase after them.

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The film grossed $102 million worldwide on a $26 million budget and has since developed a cult following.

Rogen has been busy promoting his new HBO Max movie An American Pickle in which he stars as a Polish immigrant, Herschel Greenbaum, who is preserved in a vat of pickle brine after an accident in the early 1900s only to wake up in the 21st century.

In modern-day Brooklyn, Herschel meets his great-grandson Ben, also played by Rogen, promising a funny — and emotional — fish-out-of-water story about the American Dream.

An American Pickle premieres on HBO Max on August 6.