Sequel Bits: ‘Chungking Express 2’, More ‘Spenser Confidential’, The ‘Boss Baby’ Gets Down To Some ‘Family Business’, The Future Of ‘National Treasure’, And More
In this edition of Sequel Bits:
Spenser Confidential, a Netflix movie I’m pretty sure everyone already forgot about, is getting a sequel. Speaking withCollider,SpenserdirectorPeter Bergsaid: “Brian Helgeland, who wrote the first script, just turned in a first draft last week. So we’re definitely going to do Spenser Confidential 2, we’re just trying to figure out the dates.” In the first film, “Spenser (Mark Wahlberg) — an ex-cop better known for making trouble than solving it — just got out of prison and is leaving Boston for good. But first he gets roped into helping his old boxing coach and mentor, Henry (Alan Arkin), with a promising amateur. That’s Hawk (Winston Duke), a brash, no-nonsense MMA fighter convinced he’ll be a tougher opponent than Spenser ever was. When two of Spenser’s former colleagues turn up murdered, he recruits Hawk and his foul-mouthed ex-girlfriend, Cissy (Iliza Shlesinger), to help him investigate and bring the culprits to justice.”
Before we jump into this, a reminder: there are alreadyseveralsequels toBring it On:Bring It On Again(2004),Bring It On: All or Nothing(2006),Bring It On: In It to Win It(2007),Bring It On: Fight to the Finish(2009), andBring It On: Worldwide Cheersmack(2017). But these are all direct-to-video sequels that don’t feature the original cast, and that’s not what original starGabrielle Union, who wants a sequel with the original cast. Speaking withThe Late Late Show with James Corden, Union said: “It’s absolutely going to happen, I think because we all got obsessed with Cheer on Netflix. And it kind of brought back the whole love of cheerleading. And we kind of want to see where these people would be 20 years later.”
Good news for all you Quibi fans out there!Die Hart, the Quibi “action franchise” (that’s what they call it) featuringKevin Hart, is getting a sequel/second season/follow-up. It’s calledDie Harter, and there are zero details at the moment. But in the first season, “Hart played a version of himself trying to step out of the role of “comedic sidekick” by going to the world’s greatest action star school. While there, the school’s lunatic director (John Travolta) and tough-minded rival student (Nathalie Emmanuel) pushed him to his limits as he was thrown into the deep end.”
Thank god. Thank fucking god. There’s aBoss Babysequel. It’s calledThe Boss Baby: Family Business, and it has a pretty impressive cast:Jeff Goldblum,James Marsden,Eva Longoria,Ariana Greenblatt, andAmy Sedarisare all joining the O.G. Boss Baby himself, Alec Baldwin, for the follow-up to the 2017 animated movie, per Deadline. InFamily Business, “The Templeton brothers — Tim (Marsden) and his Boss Baby little bro Ted (Baldwin) — as adults now who have drifted away from each other. Tim is now a married dad and Ted is a hedge fund CEO. But a new boss baby with a cutting-edge approach and a can-do attitude is about to bring them together again and inspire a new family business.”
And while we’re on the subject of animated sequels, here’s another:Hotel Transylvania 4.Varietysays that the sequel is happening, and that starSelena Gomezwill also serve as executive producer. Plot details aren’t available at the moment, but the story will likely once again involve Adam Sandler as Dracula, a bit of voice casting that’sreallyweird when you stop and think about it.
Last we heard, Disney was developing both aNational TreasureTV seriesfor Disney+ andNational Treasure 3, withBad Boys for Lifeco-writerChris Bremnerhandling the script. But why has it taken so long for another adventure of Benjamin Franklin Gates? Speaking withCollider,Jason Reed, who was the Production Executive at Disney for theNational Treasuremovies, said: tried my damnedest to getNational Treasure 3up. I love those movies. I worked on those from inception," and added:
“What I felt happened is even though the movies were extremely successful and had a really strong fanbase, it’s a movie that gets brought up all the time, the company was never able to capitalize on it as a franchise. It was more of a movie with a sequel andNational Treasure 3would have been another sequel.”
In other words, since Disney never found a way to add aNational Treasureattraction to their theme parks, they didn’t think a sequel was that pressing. But hopefully, we’ll getNational Treasure 3someday.
PerThe Film Stage, Wong Kar-wai has written a sequel toChungking Express. The film is calledChungking Express 2020, but despite that title, it’s actually set in the year 2036. Here’s the synopsis:
In 1990s Hong Kong, the lovelorn Policeman No. 223 encounters a blonde female assassin. They only spend a short time together overnight. The Policeman No. 663, getting over a failed relationship, has his life gradually changed by a “dreamer” who broke into his apartment.
In Chongqing in 2036, young Xiaoqian and May are unwilling to be matched with their genetically-assigned partner, and are determined to find their own “destiny.”
There’s no word on when we might see this, but by all accounts, it’s moving forward. In the original film, two different policemen in Hong Kong fall in love – one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with a server at a late-night restaurant.
