Sequels That Didn't Start Out As Sequels

April 30, 2008 2:39 PM

Are We Done Yet? was the sequel to an original film, but was weirdly also a remake of the classic Cary Grant comedy Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Along the same lines, Ocean's Twelve was based on an unrelated script first intended as a John Woo project. Can we think of any other examples of a sequel to an original movie starting life as an unconnected film?

I know that everyone loves to participate in movie threads, but be careful:

I'm NOT asking about films like 102 Dalmations or Stuart Little II...those are original sequels to existing works, and is the opposite of what I'm looking for.

I also not asking about Evil Dead II or Drunken Master II, which aren't sequels so much as remakes of their first films.

And I'm certainly not looking for "sequels in name only," where the sequels have little to do with the originals. No matter how tenuously the sequel connects to the first film, if it's an original script it's not what we're trying to find.

Again, I'm ONLY curious about sequels to original works, where the sequel was originally an unconnected film. It's okay to not answer.

posted by Ian A.T. to media & arts (18 comments total)

DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE was originally a spec script titled SIMON SAYS, It was also briefly optioned as a potential LETHAL WEAPON sequel...
posted by cinemafiend at 2:50 PM on April 30 [1 favorite]

I think this one qualifies: Die Hard IV was originally a script called World War 3.Com that was rewritten into a Die Hard movie. (Reference)
posted by sharkfu at 2:50 PM on April 30 [1 favorite]

Die Hard II: Die Harder was based on a book called 58 Minutes, a thriller unrelated to the original film. Which isn't exactly an answer to your question, but similar.

For the trifecta.
posted by not that girl at 2:58 PM on April 30 [1 favorite]

They're making a sequel to the 1999 version of The Thomas Crown Affair that is a remake of the 1964 film Topkapi, which was unrelated to the original 1968 Thomas Crown Affair.
posted by smackfu at 3:01 PM on April 30

The Limey, by Steven Soderbergh, uses footage from Ken Loach's Poor Cow to show a young Terence Stamp. Soderbergh considers The Limey to be a sequel (of sorts, at least) to Poor Cow, although it was not intended as such by writer Lem Dobbs. (You can hear them discuss this -- they like to argue -- othe DVD commentary track.)
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 3:06 PM on April 30

Die Hard III started out life as a Lethal Weapon script.

Highlander 2 was originally a scifi script unconnected to the Highlander mythos. 4 more sequels and they may get it right ...
posted by outlier at 3:18 PM on April 30

Awesome, these are all exactly what I'm looking for. My nightmare of a thread full of one word answers--reflected in the tone of my question--has so far been averted. Thanks!

I had totally forgotten that the Die Hard source material was about as convoluted as the Tommy Westphal universe...

These don't necessarily have to be films: Power Rangers is presented as an inclusive series, but the action sequences of each season are from different and totally unconnected Japanese series.

(I think we should conditionally rule out videogames, though, because I feel like this happens all the time in that industry, and we'll be here all day...)
posted by Ian A.T. at 3:20 PM on April 30

more about the die hard movies (reference)
die hard was adapted from a script for commandos 2
die hard iv was adapted from a script for enemy of the state 2
posted by noloveforned at 3:51 PM on April 30

If you add TV shows, the U.S. series Robotech is actually a mash-up of three unrelated Japanese series.
posted by EatenByAGrue at 4:04 PM on April 30

I'd put Mission Impossible II in here as well, because it borrows so heavily from Hitchcock's Notorious that it hardly qualifies as an original plot.
posted by saffry at 4:50 PM on April 30

Saw II originally started as a script by Darren Lynn Bousman called "The Desperate". He was just about to close a deal to film the movie when the Saw producers contacted him and asked if they could tweak it into the sequel.
posted by Lucinda at 5:34 PM on April 30

well i know this isn't exactly movies, but Super Mario Bro's 2 for the NES (the one that introduced ShyGuy and Birdo to the cast of enemies) was originally a game called Doki Doki Panic in japan with unrelated graphics and music and was adapted for the u.s. market.
posted by radiosig at 5:36 PM on April 30

whoops, i did a videogame. erase me internet jesus
posted by radiosig at 5:37 PM on April 30

Not sure if this is an answer to your question but I think it's interesting and will appeal to you:

Clean, Shaven (1993) is the first film made by Lodge Kerrigan. A brief synopsis is: A mentally unstable man desperately attempts to locate his missing daughter.

Keane (2004) is the third film made by Lodge Kerrigan. A brief synopsis is: A mentally unstable man desperately attempts to locate his missing daughter.

Besides both being brilliant films with extraordinary performances that can be summed up with the above synopses, the films couldn't be more different. The films are neither sequels or remakes. They're simply one man exploring the "same" topic twice.

To make the situation even more interesting, the DVD for Clean, Shaven features an audio commentary by Kerrigan and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh whereas the DVD for Keane features an alternate cut by Soderbergh.

Also, I'll second the recommendation above for the commentary by Dobbs and Soderbergh that is on the Limey. It is one of my favorite commentaries, though I don't remember an exchange regarding its sequel-ability to Poor Cow.

As for the specific question you're asking, I think it's not as uncommon as you may think, especially when talking action tent-poles. Though I'm drawing mostly blanks at the moment, as someone who followed screenwriting sales news through much of the 80s and 90s, I read about this happening repeatedly.

Also, the second two Bourne films are both based on books and are sequels to the first, but they differ considerably from their respective books. For instance, wikipedia has the plot synopsis for the third book as: "The novel follows David Webb, alias Jason Bourne, as he works to find his old enemy, Carlos the Jackal, who is trying to kill him. As the Jackal enters old age and his infamy fades, he decides that he will do two things before he dies: kill Webb/Bourne, and destroy the KGB facility of Novgorod, where the Jackal was trained and later turned away." If you've seen the movie, you know that that's not what it's about.

Another (possibly poor) example that comes to mind is Michael Haneke's first three films (Seventh Continent, Benny's Video, and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance) are considered "thematic sequels" by the filmmaker though they share no common plot or characters. However, the source material was similar in all three cases: Haneke took a true act of violence that in each case was unexplained. He then extrapolated backwards (and in one case forwards) from the violence to get his plots.

Haneke refers to these films as his Glaciation Trilogy (or "cinema of glaciation"). If you can find it, I think that The Moor's Head, a film Haneke wrote but didn't direct, also fits in nicely with the trilogy (though I have my suspicions that actor turned director Paulus Manker (who stars in two Haneke films--one from the trilogy and his later film Code Unknown) changed Haneke's ending as the last 2 minutes are terribly disappointing compared to the buildup and don't sit, to me, with Haneke's world view as expressed in his other films).

Lastly, and I may be misremembering this, isn't Evil Dead 2 more of a remake of Evil Dead than a sequel? Again, different from what you're asking but still interesting.
posted by dobbs at 6:15 PM on April 30

noloveforned: "more about the die hard movies (reference)
die hard was adapted from a script for commandos 2
die hard iv was adapted from a script for enemy of the state 2"

I'm not sure that you're right about Die Hard being from a script for Commandos 2. I've never heard that anywhere else. It's supposed to be loosely based upon a book:

That's right, Die Hard, one of the least bookable films of all time, is loosely based on the novel Nothing Lasts Forever, by the obviously fake-named Roderick Thorp. That book is a sequel, so you'd assume the first one was called Nothing Lasts Forev, but it was actually given the imaginative title of The Detective. It was itself adapted as a film in 1968. In that movie, the John McClane role was portrayed by ... wait for it ...
Frank Sinatra. (reference) (more info)
posted by sharkfu at 1:00 AM on May 1

In a reversal, Tears of the Sun started out as a Die Hard sequel.
posted by Doctor Suarez at 10:45 AM on May 1

According to the IMDB trivia section, Speed 2: Cruise Control was originally supposed to be Die Hard 3.
posted by Tesseractive at 12:24 PM on May 1

Wow, someone needs to do a Six Degrees of Die Hard experiment...
posted by mkultra at 10:00 AM on May 4