The Stars are Still Alive, Let's Make a Sequel!

Cafe Society
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Pepper Mill was watching A Very Brady Renovation last night on HGTV, featuring a bunch of the actors who played the Brady kids, now grown up. Earlier in the evening, I had been watching John Huston’s The Man Who Would be King.

The thought struck me that the three leads, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, and Christopher Plummer, were still around. (Saeed Jaffrey, who played “Billy Fish”, died four years ago. But Michael’s wife, Shakira, who had an almost invisible role as Roxanne, is still around). You could do a sequel for the movie (unlike Young Frankenstein, which came out around the same time, and most of whose stars have passed away).

They’ve done this before – look at Neil Simon’s sequel to *The Odd Couple[/i[, featuring the stars of the original movie, Jack Lemmmon and Walter Matthau, made decades after the original. He basically stole the story idea (their kids get married) from the TV movie sequel to the TV series, starring the original stars, Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, decades later. So there’s definitely precedent.
Of course, two of the characters were dead, but Hollywood has never found that an insuperable obstacle. Look at how Ygor magically returned to life for Ghost of Frankenstein. Or how, despite being unmistakably killed over and over again, Dracula keeps coming back.
The Man Who Would be KIng II

Kipling (Plummer) at his desk in Sussex: Who is it? Who’s there?

Peachy Carnahan (Caine): Give us a drink.

Kipling (Squinting to see better): Carnahan! But you’re dead! They told me they found you in a gutter in India!

Peachy: Oh, no, me and Danny were always hard to kill. Isn’t that true, Danny?

Danny Dravot (Connery): That’s right, brother! I could use something to wet my throat, too!

Kipling: But…but Peachy was carrying your head. With a crown. I kept in on my mantle for years!

Peachy: Ah, no. That was Ootah the Terrible’s head. I rescued it after the polo match. Needed a place to keep the crown.

Danny: We’re lookin’ for new worlds to conquer. All we ask is that you grant us the use of your study, and that you witness the signing of a contrack betwixt myself, Danny, and Roxanne.

Roxanne (Shakira0: Hello.

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*Taxi Driver 2: Graveyard Shift. *Travis Bickle has another mental breakdown after the last porno theater in New York closes down and shoots up the Times Square Disney store. Starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd and a CGI Peter Boyle.

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Three Mules for Sister Sara – Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine return as Hogan and Sara, now retiring from running their casino-cum-bordello in San Francisco just in time for the 1906 earthquake.

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Lyndon – The Return of Barry Lyndon – Despite what the narrator said at the end of the first film, Lyndon (Ryan O’Neal) finally finds success as a Con Man and procures another fortune, at which point the peg-legged rogue returns to re-woo the Countess (Marisa Berenson), despite the disapprobation of Lord Bullingdon (Leon Vitale) and his former tutor, Reverend Runt (Murray Melvin). Captain Potsdorf (Hardy Krueger) shows up to testify to Barry’s character, or lack thereof.

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Rocky II – The Bride of Rocky Horror

C’mon, you can fill this one in by yourself. The whole cast’s still around except for Charles Gray and Jon Adams. You gather them all together for The Bride of Rocky Horror.

It’s gotta be better than Shock Treatment.

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Zorro: The Gayer Blade - all the main principals are still alive.

Tagline: Action! Adventure! Romance! None of the above!

Tagline2: Already boycotted by the LGBTQ community!

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“Barefoot in the Park…with Walkers”
Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, now great-grandparents, move into a retirement community into a one-bedroom unit identical to their first apartment in New York.

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Magnum PI…the buddies solve crime at their assisted living facility.

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But John Hillerman’s dead. That’s a pretty big gap. Plus there would be the confusion with the reboot.

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Thats true. The reboot and the original might share the same name but in style and tone they are quite different. The original Magnum was character driven and about friendship and male bonding. I dont think the reboot has the same dynamic.

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Hulk Hogan and “Tiny” Lister are still alive!!! Hollywood should making No Holds Barred II

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Felt really, really old when I found out it is The Jerk’s 40th anniversary this year.
Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, M Emmet Walsh, Jackie Mason, Bill Macy, Caitlin Adams and Carl Gottlieb are still alive. Surely that’s enough for a sequel. Navin’s parents, sadly, are both gone.

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While most of the cast of** Annie Hall** are still alive… do we really want Woody Allen making more movies?

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I’d suggest Dirty and Smelling of Urine Harry, with Clint reprising his presidential interview with the chair, and injecting great honesty to the ‘did I fire six shots or only five; to tell you the truth I lost count’.

Of major series co-stars who lived to be sequelled - Tyne Daly and Hal Holbrook are about all that’re left. Sadly Albert Popwell isn’t around to make it six Clint Eastwood movies.

PS - A very prescient observation from the future. Worth sitting through the first 1:15.

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Xanadu II – Olympus

Gene Kelly’s gone, but most of the cast is still alive and performing. ELO’s still there, and so are The Tubes.

Of course, I’m not sure anyone would want a sequel to the badly-panned film, but it apparently has a cult following, and the record did really well, as did a Broadway version (which poked fun at the film), so it might pay off.

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The Way We Are Now…With Walkers

Ditto Streisand and Redford

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A real life example was Texasville (1990). It was a sequel to The Last Picture Show (1971), made nineteen years after the original. It had most of the original cast (Clu Gallagher and Ben Johnson were both still alive but didn’t appear in the sequel).

The surprising thing is that Bogdanovich could now make a third movie in the series with the same actors.

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I was just mentioning Play It Again, Sam in another thread and checked. Most of the key people are still alive except for Susan Anspach who died just last year. Pretty good for a 1972 movie. It would be really great fodder for a sequel … except for one little thing.

Jerry Lacy is still active. Wow.

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Just for comparison, Micheal Apted is still at it with his original group of 7 year olds, 56 years later!

63 Up

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Seems every actor in any movie that made even a small profit, no matter their labors over the ensuing years, will eventually come back to make an appearance, or star in, a ‘remake’. I believe Keanu Reeves is going to do another Matrix movie.

It’s called the ‘Make a Big Fat Paycheck at the end of your career’ syndrome.