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From 'Top Gun' to 'Avatar': late sequels, when the film industry is waiting

2022-06-03T12:23:06.027Z


The new installment of the film starring Tom Cruise is part of the list of sequels to be released many years after the original film


In 1986, a military drama about aviators sprinkled with a somewhat cheesy love story and expensive action scenes rocked theaters around the world.

Starring the inexhaustible Tom Cruise and directed by Tony Scott,

Top Gun

became the highest-grossing film of the year with a collection of more than 356 million dollars (333 million euros) despite not having completely convinced the critics. .

In cases like this, in which a story becomes so popular and profitable, Hollywood logic usually establishes that it is appropriate to launch a second part to get it to the market as soon as possible.

The success of Cruise and company has had its sequel,

Top Gun: Maverick

, but this sequel has arrived now: more than 30 years later.

More information

Tom Cruise, the prophet of cinema in theaters: "I will never release on platforms"

Something similar will happen in December with the premiere of

Avatar: The Sense of Water

, a sequel to James Cameron's 2009 film that left its mark for its revolutionary use of computer-generated imagery and that for a time was at the top of the products highest-grossing movies in history.

Against all odds and for various reasons, there are times when the industry takes a long time before bringing the second part of its most popular stories to the public.

These are some of the best-known cases of when Hollywood made us wait.

'Top Gun: Maverick'

Behind the long wait to see Tom Cruise again in his legendary leather jacket there are several reasons.

In the first place, the initiative to launch a sequel was not raised by the Paramount Pictures company until 2010, when producer Jerry Bruckheimer and the director of the original film, Tony Scott, were contacted.

The project began to take shape, with a script underway and with Cruise's involvement, but a tragic event caused the abrupt cessation of production: Scott's death in 2012. It was not until 2015 that the initiative was resumed, this time hand in hand with the company Skydance, and in 2017 it was confirmed that Joseph Kosinski would assume the direction.

A new obstacle made it difficult to return to work.

Cruise, the film's star, had lost interest in the project.

According to Kosinski, it was in a phone call that she finally managed to convince the actor, giving him an "emotional reason to return to the character."

Cruise found the idea of ​​Maverick having to tutor

Goose

's son , his deceased friend in the first part, attractive.

Filming finally took place between 2018 and 2019.

'Blade Runner 2049'

Although the revolutionary science fiction

Blade Runner

, directed by Ridley Scott in 1982, left the public a little cold at its premiere, it did not take long to generate a great fan base internationally that made it one of the most recognized icons of popular culture. .

However, it was not until 2017 that he received a sequel from Canadian Denis Villeneuve.

The main complication when it came to continuing the story had to do with rights issues regarding the novel by the American Philip K. Dick

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

, of which

Blade Runner

is an adaptation with which quite a few liberties were taken.

The project was paralyzed from the end of the nineties, until Andrew Kosove and Broderik Johnson, co-founders of the production company Alcon Entertainment, took over the intellectual property necessary for the realization of a sequel almost 30 years later.

The title role fell to Ryan Gosling, while a graying Harrison Ford returned to play agent Rick Deckard.

Unfortunately, the film did not perform as well as expected at the box office, although on the other hand it was generally well received by critics and audiences, who considered it a worthy sequel.

Blade Runner 2049

will feature a continuation as an Amazon series produced by Ridley Scott, thus ensuring that this belated sequel will not be lost like tears in the rain.

'Doctor Sleep'

In the unconscious of many there is still the terrifying trace of room 327 of the Overlook Hotel, the specters of the twins in its corridors and the image of a maddened Jack Nicholson with an axe.

Such is the impact of

The Shining

, an adaptation of Stephen King's novel of the same name that Stanley Kubrick brought to theaters in 1980 and which received its belated sequel in 2019 with

Doctor Sleep

, by Mike Flanagan.

The main reason this movie came so many years after its first part is simple: King himself didn't write the second part of his opus until 2013.

The following year, Warner Brothers began laying the groundwork for the film adaptation, and in 2016 filmmaker Akiva Goldsman announced that he would write a script and also serve as producer.

Not having enough pull, the project stalled for a while, unable to raise enough capital.

It was not until the success of

It

(2017), a

remake

also based on a work by Stephen King, that the production of

Doctor Sleep

was able to become effective in 2018 with a new script.

As with

Blade Runner: 2049

, the film's box office run was rather muted, albeit with generally favorable reviews.

'Mary Poppins Returns'

When a project is said to have been through development hell, expect its journey to have been anything but easy for a long time.

In the case of the sequel to the 1964 film

Mary Poppins

, there was no greater barrier to getting the production off the ground than PL Travers, the author of the novel in which the iconic character debuted.

On more than one occasion, from the moment the first part came out, the writer rejected the proposals of Disney executives for the realization of a sequel.

She later was open to the idea of ​​a continuation, but with particular demands, among which the veto of the color red in Mary Poppins' clothes was included.

It was in the eighties when the project came closest to being carried out, with a script that Travers co-wrote with his author friend Brian Sibley, but casting problems were not long in coming and actress Julie Andrews declined to play the character again. titular character.

In the end, it wasn't until 2015 that a Rob Marshall-directed sequel starring Emily Blunt was greenlit.

The return of Mary Poppins

, released in 2018, was well received both at the box office and by critics and was approved by the family of the late Travers.

'S2: Trainspotting'

There are times when the sequels are not late, but at the right time.

At least that's how the director of

Trainspotting

(1996), Dany Boyle, wanted to see it with his sequel,

T2: Trainspotting

(2017).

As early as 2007, Boyle made known his intentions to reunite the cast led by Ewan McGregor for a continuation of the black comedy about Edinburgh's heroin addicts, but expressed his wish that the passing of the years be noted in Their protagonists.

In the end, he had to wait a little longer than expected, since the first script was not ready until 2015, the year in which the Sony production company Tristar Pictures took over the project.

Boyle's gamble paid off, and the sequel raised considerably more capital than it cost.

The critics were also warm in the reception of the film, although it did not put it on the same level as the original.

'Independence Day: Counterattack'

Few action

blockbusters

have defined their own subgenre as much as the 1996 film

Independence Day

, in which Will Smith launches a counterattack against alien invaders on America's holy day of July 4th.

Although the idea of ​​a continuation of the story was already around the head of producer and screenwriter Dean Devlin in 2001, it was almost ten years later, in 2009, when the project took a little more shape.

Both Evlin and director Roland Emmerich seriously considered making a two-part sequel, a trend that became noticeable in the early 2010s with franchises like Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games.

This approach meant the loss of Will Smith for the continuation, since the cost of the actor for both parties as a whole, of 50 million dollars (46 million euros), was too high in the eyes of 20th Century Fox. Finally, for 2014 , a single film was approved by the production company and its title,

Independence Day: Counterattack

, was revealed in 2015. Unlike its predecessor, this summer production did not meet its box office goals in 2016, without even being the film most profitable for the month of June.

The critics did not speak wonders of it either, although, like a good

blockbuster

, it was never the field in which he hoped to succeed.

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Source: elparis

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