Funny things, sequels. Love them or hate them, they tend to fall into one of two camps…

There are some films that just scream out to be continued in future installments, only for fans to be frustrated by the apathy and profit-chasing of Hollywood studios. The hardened and eternally frustrated following that Dredd has amassed is a case in point.

In contrast, there’s a second group of films that when you happen across a poster advertising the sequel, you find yourself involuntarily blurting out “What the f@&k?” Paul Blart 2, is a prime example of this.

There is however, a third, fabled group of sequels. The film ideas and concepts that were just too utterly nutty to make the jump from page to screen. These scripts are cobbled together on the orders of studio execs eager to cash in on a successful film, but are then filed away quietly as they are simply not up to scratch. They subsequently fade into cinematic legend, eventually unearthed and picked apart by future generations of bewildered/awestruck film fans. A prime exemplar of this would be Tim Burton’s ‘Superman Lives’, which was the subject of a recently released film documentary. You may have seen the photos of a slightly demented looking Nic Cage, squeezed into his extremely plastic-looking suit. But then, when does Nic Cage ever not look demented?

Here, for your bemusement and dissection, are five of the most infamous sequel ideas that (thankfully) never came to pass:

5. Total Recall (1990)

“Get your ass to Mars….”

One of the biggest cheese-fests the 1990’s was to produce, Total Recall managed to make four times it’s original budget. Much like Arnold

Schwarzenegger himself, this was a cinematic Goliath that refused to be killed off so easily. Ironically, the original source material of writer Phillip K Dick would prove to be the undoing of any potential follow-ups.

A TV series was piloted, but it was deemed to have too many similarities to Dick’s other cinematic contribution, ‘Blade Runner’, and it was dropped quite quickly. There was a comic book series, and then one subsequent idea for a film sequel saw Doug Quaid becoming a cop, and working alongside Martian mutants who could predict crimes. This would stall in development hell until Steven Spielberg eventually resurrected it, and used the concept to make ‘Minority Report’.

Two scripts were created, however, which would have kept Quaid’s feet firmly within the confines of the original film. One of these saw him returning to Earth, and becoming involved in a global plot to assassinate the President. The other saw him again mixing with sinister political forces, and then seeking out more alien technology on Mars in order to protect the planet from the Sun, which had rather inconveniently decided to explode. Both scripts would feature bad guys trying to persuade Quaid he was still sat dozing in his chair at the Recall clinic, and would reintroduce characters supposedly killed off in the first film, such as his doctor and fake wife.

Arnie was shown the scripts and refused to come on board, though he did go on to star in ‘The 6th Day’, which featured strikingly similar themes. Star Trek TNG’s Jonathan Frakes was reportedly bought on board for a time to progress the scripts, but they were eventually shelved by the studio, possibly due to their reliance on rehashing the ‘is it a dream or not’ theme from the first film. Instead, we would go on to get the recent Len Wiseman reboot, starting Colin Farrell as Quaid. A visually impressive affair, this retelling of the original tale was sadly savaged by critics, apparently closing the door to future works.

4. Alien3

“I’m a murderer and rapist of women…”

With the success of the first two films in the ‘Alien’ Franchise, there was no question that further sequels would come to pass. But the lengthy and torturous process by which the oft-maligned third offering would come to be released is worthy of an article all of its own.

Several ideas were scripted and turned into the studio execs. These mainly comprised of the acidic xenomorphs making their way back towards Earth, and uniting a fractured and conflicted human society against this new threat. One saw the bugs being treated as an infection, akin to HIV. The other saw them wreaking havoc in and around an intergalactic trading post. But the most notorious of all was crafted by Kiwi director Vincent Ward.

Ward’s script forms the basis for the eventual sequel, in that Ripley does crash land into the midst of a male-only colony. But there’s a fundamental difference. It’s a cathedral planet, full of monks. Ward envisaged a gigantic wood-crafted planet devoted to religion, and populated entirely by members of the clergy. The monks would initially see the arrival of the Sulaco escape pod as a divine sign from the heavens, before going on to be stalked and killed by a Xenomorph that has made the trip, protecting the impregnated Ripley.

The script would see the Xeno scrambling around the shelves of endless wooden libraries, across the intricate carved wooden ceilings of churches, and through large fields of crops, as the monks used flaming torches and pitchforks on it and Ripley, who they believe to be an agent of the Devil. It’s nuts, utterly different to anything the franchise had seen, and would have cost a fortune to film. Enter a young David Fincher, a re-write turning the wooden cathedral world into a prison-refinery, and a shaven headed Sigourney Weaver…

3. Se7en (1995)

 

“If you kill him, he will win…”

Those of you who secretly get your rocks off on seeing deliberately misspelt words in film titles (Genisys), or titles containing numbers instead of letters, were no doubt tickled by the spelling of another of Fincher’s offerings. It was a witticism the studios wanted very much to repeat, with a sequel planned which would have been imaginatively titled ‘Ei8ht’.

With one half of the original film’s police partnership in custody for murder, and pretty much every other character who had featured in it dead, you may well be scratching your head at this point wondering where a potential sequel might come from. Well, wonder no more. You know Morgan Freeman’s character? He isn’t just a world-weary cop that chills out by throwing knives into the back of his door, whilst falling asleep to a metronome. He’s actually got a hidden talent that he uses to help his colleagues catch the bad guys. He’s psychic.

Yep. Psychic…. Funny that. I mean, I’m just throwing this out there. If he did have psychic powers, maybe he might have used them to, I don’t know, stop his mate’s wife from having her pretty head carved off by the loony-tune they were hunting?

Regardless, Fincher was quoted as saying he’d rather stub cigarettes out in his eyes than bring the bizarre concept to the screen, and it was canned. However, the idea was subsequently adapted into a thriller titled ‘Solace’ featuring Colin Farrell (The apparent patron saint of remakes…) and Anthony Hopkins. It’s shortly due be released in the U.S. after spending two years awaiting a distributor. Sounds awesome. No, really….

2. The Rock (1996)

“Your best? Losers always whine about ‘their best’. Winners go home and f&@k the Prom Queen…”

Try to have a conversation about ‘The Rock’ with the ungrateful youth of today, and you’ll find yourself discussing the finer points of a particularly buff wrestler who, aptly enough, has become legendary for invigorating movie sequels.

But to my generation, ‘The Rock’ was the ultimate in action film technology. It combined brutal action scenes, Nic Cage’s batshitcrazy-ometer once again set to 115%, a poison gas that melts your face off, and SIR SEAN BLOODY CONNERY!!! If you haven’t seen it, there’s a yawning chasm of enjoyment in your life just waiting to be filled.

The film ended with both its main protagonists alive, and (like Total Recall) having returned four times its 75m dollar budget, the potential for a follow-on was high. At the time, rumours suggested that Connery’s John Mason would be returning to save the President from a rogue SAS team out to kidnap him. In the absence of that sequel, Connery went on to star in toilet-fest ‘The Avengers’ (no, not that one…), and the much maligned LXG, then promptly retired from acting altogether.

A further script treatment later surfaced which involved Cage’s Stanley Goodspeed on the run from the U.S. Govt, with his microfilm full of forbidden secrets. However, he’d be doing this whilst trying to simultaneously prevent Michael Ironside and a bunch of mercs from carrying out a deadly chemical attack. The catch? They’d be using rock samples from Alcatraz that had been contaminated during the attack in the first film. The title? ‘The Rock 2 – Poisoned Minerals’…

1. Gladiator (2000)

“Shadows and Dust…”

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. The quote should have been ‘At my signal unleash hell’, which is exactly what depressive warbler Nick Cave had got planned for Maximus in his proposed sequel.

When a film makes 450 million dollars, and wins 5 Oscars, there’s going to be a desire to use it as the basis for making more money. But how to get round the fact that the titular character was killed off in a blaze of glory at the end of the original? Easy. You just bring him back from the dead.

As anybody who’s seen ‘The Proposition’ will be aware, Nick Cave does have a talent for script-writing. Following conversations with fellow Aussie Russell Crowe, Cave set to work on a script. Dodging the idea of a prequel, he instead decided that the ancient gods would resurrect Maximus from the dead to do their bidding. Their enemy? Christianity. Maximus was to fight his way through hell back to Earth, and kill the leader of the Christian armies, who were eroding support for the old ways.

Assisting him in this endeavour would be his old pal, Juba (Djimon Honsou). The catch would be that the Christian leader would in fact be a grown up Lucius. Having been tricked into slaying his old mentor’s grandchild, and been betrayed by the gods, Cave would end the film with a 20 minute sequence where Maximus fights on through eternity, playing a part in every major battle in history, before being revealed to be part of be modern day US army.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the studios didn’t go for it, and the script only recently came back to light. Cave remains defiantly proud of his idea, which surely would win an award for it’s originality.

So, would you want to have seen any of the above ideas made into films? Can you think of any crazy sequels to rival this bunch of madness? Sound off below!