I've been curious about scripts that got retrofitted to become sequels to movies or a script for a sequel that was turned into an original film instead.
For example, the sequel to Honey I Shrunk the Kids, (Honey I Blew Up the Kid) started out as an original movie titled Big Baby.
There's a rumor that Bio-Dome was originally written as a Bill and Ted sequel. However, this has been debunked by Alex Winter.
Anyone know of any other examples?
by ProjAtlMusic
31 Comments
I think Ocean’s 12 was possibly a retrofitted script.
Die Hard 3 was an original screenplay called Simon Says (unrelated to the Dane Cook Dennis Rodman two hander Simon Sez)
Saw 2 was an unrelated script that they just slapped some Saw stuff on at the last minute
American psycho 2 is a good example of this. I think Scream 2 or 3 was too but I don’t remember which. However I will say that movies like this that are retrofitted into sequels tend to suck
For recent movies, Ready or Not 2 was originally an unrelated story about two sisters.
They had the idea for Dirty Harry without having a script. Four or five were written: one that director Don Siegel liked and the other Clint Eastwood liked.
They ultimately went with the one Siegel liked but the one Clint liked was used for the second film.
Kull the Conqueror was originally supposed to be Conan 3, but Arnold Schwarzenegger decided not to reprise his role, so they changed it to a Kull movie.
Highlander II was supposed to be an awful original sci fi film. But they stuffed some Highlander lore in there and made it an awful sequel instead.
Cloverfield sequels
Saw 2
Evan Almighty
Minority Report (Spielberg/Cruise) was originally in development as a Total Recall sequel, that would have Arnold Schwarzenegger respiring his role before it ended up being its own thing.
American Psycho 2 was a generic slasher retrofitted with a reference or two to Patrick Bateman so it could benefit from the name (for all the good it did.)
Theres a few in hellraiser 5-10 but I’ve heard conflicting information about which.
Pretty much every Hellraiser between 4 and the reboot.
Dirty Dancing 2 was a deeply personal, semi-aut0biographical story about falling in love in Cuba
Die Hard 4.0 was a script called “Firesale” and repurposed into a Die Hard movie
I don’t have any evidence, but I’m convinced that the 12 Monkey’s TV Show was originally called a Time Travel show called “Splinter” and the whole first Season was added afterwards when a Producer realised the Network had the rights to the 12 Monkeys Movie
Minority Report started out as a sequel to Total Recall.
Saw II was originally a film called The Desperate.
Hellraiser 5-8 were all originally different movies, or so I’ve heard.
Director Gareth Evans had a script called ‘Berandal’ (Thug) and he was gonna make it with his Indonesian team. It turned out, they didnt have the budget for it so they instead made a lower budget film with the same team called “The Raid”. That movie blew up. Now they have the budget, So they just took their old script Berandal, made the main character the same one from the Raid, and it becomes Raid 2. Thats why the two movies are minimally connected except for the hero cop now doing undercover and police corruption/gang
Minority Report was originally written to be the sequel of Total Recall. The precogs were originally going to be psychic mutants from Mars.
Peter Sagal, who lived in Cuba in the late 50s, wrote a script. This script was titled *Cuba Mine*, about a young American woman who witnessed the Cuban revolution and had a romance with a young Cuban revolutionary. The screenplay was to be a serious political romance story, documenting, among other stories, how the Cuban revolution transformed from idealism to terror.
That script would later be picked up and retooled as *Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights*. Sagal has a “story by” credit, even though not a single line from his script is in the final version.
A Shot in the Dark was changed into a Pink Panther sequel.
Lethal Weapon 3 became Die Hard 3
Lethal Weapon 3 then became Lethal Weapon 3
Super Mario Bros 2….oh wrong sub lol
The horror movie The Collector was written as a prequel to Saw, but wound up being its own thing.
I think the last True Detective season was supposed to be an unrelated series that got shoehorned into TD.
Not a movie, but Super Mario Bros 2 was a completely different game before they put a coat of mario paint on it
There’s a Jean-Claude Van Damme film called Cyborg which was originally supposed to be a sequel to the Masters of the Universe film with Dolph Lundgren. Not really sure how it would have worked as an MotU film.
Amongst Halo fans, the prevailing theory for the Paramount series was that it started as a generic sci-fi series, but then Halo was slapped on top of it.
As the #1 Short Circuit fan my answer is Short Circuit 2. It was a reworked script.
District 9 rose out of the ashes of what would have been the Peter Jackson, Blomkamp Halo movie.
Not quite the same but Star Trek: The Motion Picture was actually scripts for a new series call Star Trek: Phase Two, but with the release of Star Wars Paramount wanted a movie.