Column Chronicles: Failed movie sequel projects

Failed movie sequel projects

Frank Cotolo
December 23, 2021

Hollywood often tries to milk money from the public after a huge hit movie by producing a sequel. Many times, it works and sometimes the sequel is better than the original. Other times, the sequel is so bad that it is never completed. Thanks to secret sources, here is a list of sequels that never made it to the screen.

THE FOUNTAINHEAD, PART 2: ROARK IS A WRECK
After the 1949 hit adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel, from her screenplay, producers hired upstart writers to deliver a script that carried the story further. In it, architect Howard Roark appears thirteen years after the first movie. Roark, divorced thrice, an alcoholic buried in debt, cons a millionaire to invest in a building the shape of a trapezoid. Roark's romantic interest is Lily Dilly, a female rapscallion with only six days to live. The climax included an elephant stampede on Broadway.

THE GREAT EARTH
"The Good Earth," Pearl Buck's beautiful novel of love and greed was a smash hit in 1937. Producers unsuccessfully bankrolled fifteen different screenplay drafts and as many writers trying to enhance the story of Wang, the Chinese peasant-turned-wealthy businessman, into a sequel. In one draft, Wang becomes obsessed with bringing his wife back from the grave by digging his way to Heaven. In another draft, Wang, still rich but depressed, invents The Wang-A-Doodle, a motorized rickshaw. In still another, Wang travels into the past to confront Marco Polo's theft of Lo Mein, which he wants to call spaghetti and sell in his home country.

ANOTHER WILD BUNCH
The 1969 movie, "The Wild Bunch," had producers licking their chops to make money on a sequel. Scripts were commissioned from top novelists (using fake names) to capture the gritty violence of a new crew of vagrant, washed up cowboys. The project was abandoned when every writer lost interest and quit (three committed suicide).

COOL HAND LUKE MEETS NORMAN BATES
Using two characters from top money making movies, screenwriters imagined Cool Hand Luke did not die in the movie of the same name, but escaped and was hiding at the Bates Motel, run by Norman Bates of "Psycho". Without explanation, Norman returns to run the motel and befriends Luke after he checks in. Norman wants to get Luke interested in taxidermy but Luke is set on building a rocket ship out of old truck engine parts so he can escape from Earth.

NOON COWBOY
This attempt to make a sequel of "Midnight Cowboy" was doomed from the start, when screenwriters developed a story turned down by all actors. In it, main character Joe Buck, who is last seen in the first movie on a bus to Florida, with his friend, Ratso Rizzo, who has died in his seat, decides to sell Rizzo's corpse for parts so he can get an apartment. Rizzo, however, is rotting faster in the Florida weather than he would have up north, and, of course, he can't move, so Joe has to carry his corpse to a medical school, which he does, but finds out that Rizzo’s parts are not enough for a security deposit and first month's rent.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.