Kevin Smith once explained that he will be able to work forever in Hollywood. Because while none of his movies have ever been a great success, they all made a profit. Even Mallrats (although that took DVD sales to turn the corner). The reason, Smith explained, was that he makes movies with lots of talking and movies with talking are cheap to make. So Kevin Smith and Woody Allen and Spike Lee and Jim Jarmusch will always be able to make movies. And you will see endless sequels to Wild Things and Cruel Intentions and Police Academy and American Pie and Friday the 13th.
But movies like Lost in Space and Die Hard and Lethal Weapon and Men in Black and The Matrix take serious coin. So Hollywood loves them because they can earn huge money but if they show one gray hair they get dropped in a second for the next big multi-million dollar franchise.
I accidentally saw Cruel Intentions 3 on late night cable. It was surprisingly good, considering it’s basically soft core porn. It also has absolutely nothing to do with the first one (no idea about the sequel) and I had no idea it’s what I was watching till I looked up the listings to see what it was I’d seen.
Blade Runner 2 anyone? They could cast Rutger Hauer again, seeing as how he was a replicant and they could have made more than one of him… Besides, Rutger seems to be the king of the S-T-V market.
Although the money-related reasons already given are probably the reason why there was never a LIS2, I thought of another angle:
The biggest problem is that the movie utterly failed to follow the gist of the series that attracts people to reruns of the show. The movie was styled after the first black and white season that attempted to be straight science fiction, however schlockily done. But most people hear “Lost in Space”, and they think of the high-camp second and third seasons. The show was really the adventures of mincing dandy Dr. Smith, boy genius Will Robinson and a straight-man Robot touring the freak-show galaxy.
If they’d had the courage to make the LIS movie a comedy, there probably would have been a sequel.
All the movies you mention, though, had at least some kind of cult following. (Much as Lost in Space did, before that god-awful movie came out.) Is there any record of anybody, anywhere in the world, watching that movie twice (not counting people who were screaming “Please, officer, I’ll talk, I’ll talk, just make it stop!”)
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and drink until I forget that movie again.
I am not sure why you did not like “Lost In Space” because every person that I’ve ever spoke with about the movie found it entertaining and so did I. Maybe the problem rest not with the movie but with your expectation of what the movie would be or in what direction the producers would lead us. What ever the case may be I find it unfair that you insult those that did enjoy the movie. Every body has an opinion and I won’t judge you because of yours and I ask that you not judge me. Thank you.
I too have been waiting many years for a sequel to “Lost In Space” and I am not sure how it did at the box office, but I love that movie and have seen it at least 2 or 3 score times. In fact I just finished watching it again 20 minutes ago. Hopefully a sequel is being made now and will be out sometime soon, as well as the sequel to “Clover Field” which is another good movie that should have a sequel.
Ummmm…no. Both movie sucked donkey-balls and if there is any justice in the universe neither will ever be spoken of again. Hollywood will find other garbage to make rather than sequels to previous garbage that didn’t make a cent.
I’ve always thought a gritty reboot of Lost In Space ala Battlestar Galactica reboot would be hella cool!
A family fighting to survive lost in an unknown region of space with a scheming creepy possible child molester that they may need to survive? Sounds cool as long as it is gritty as hell!
My expectations of the movie was that it have a minimum of logic and plausibility. Though the script making less sense than those of the Irwin Allen series (which I watched the first few seasons of) was an amazing achievement.
