5 sequels that took forever to reach the Big Screen

Doctor Sleep joins the list of sequels that took several years to reach the screen

LatinAmerincan Post | Luis Liborio

Listen to this article

 

Doctor Sleep

The response to the trailer of Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan, 2019) has had all kinds of nuances, from those who have been completely excited, to the skeptics. The wait between the 1980 film The Shining (Stanley Kubrick) and Doctor Sleep was almost forty years. The reason is simple, Stephen King, author of the novels on which you are based both tapes, also wrote them with a large time interval: 36 years, says El Excélsior Mexicano. Surely if King had written the books continuously, the film sequel would not have made the audience wait so long.

One of the problems of producing sequels is that the success of the original film may no longer exist, or the production team, direction, and actors may no longer be complete or, in the other hand, are way too old. In LatinAmerican Post we remember other sequels that also took "an eternity" to be produced.

Psycho

According to the Harmonica Cinema site, Alfred Hitchcock's hit film, released in 1960, had a sequel until 1983, directed by Richard Franklin. Among the main reasons are that, possibly, Hitchcock did not think about making a sequel because the book on which the original story is based did not have it at that time. In the industry Psycho had two sequels that curiously have nothing to do with the literary sequels, the first film is the one released in 1983. Harmonica Cinema, says that Psycho II did not achieve what the master of terror did 23 years ago due to the poor development, despite having Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and the legendary Jerry Goldsmith in charge of the music.

You can also read: Jon Snow and 6 other characters that made his interpreters sick

Avatar

Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) is considered the highest grossing film in history, although there is a controversy generated by the inflationary theme with Gone with the Wind. Usually, and with popular movies, sequels are planned as fast as the can, but the sequel will hardly see the light in 2021, twelve years later. Avatar 2 has been postponed year after year since 2015, Cinemas Comics noted that Cameron declared to be extremely careful with the new film and also not only develops the second installment but has also worked on what will be a whole saga. For its part, El Economista de Mexico highlights that just this year Disney announced the new dates of each movie in that saga: Avatar 2 in 2021, Avatar 3 in 2023, Avatar 4 in 2025 and Avatar 5 in 2027, a very ambitious project.

The Hobbit

In this case, is not a sequel but prequel, The Hobbit by Peter Jackson was released in 2012, 9 years after The Return of the King the last film in the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings. The wait was fortunate because despite release 9 years after, the trilogy generated more fans of JRR Tolkien's world. The movie also had the original cast including Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Elijah Wood, Christopher Lee, and Andy Serkis, among others, plus Howard Shore in music.

Peter Jackson served as a producer and was determined not to be a director, to avoid coming into artistic conflict with what was created in the original films, but, according to the Cine Premiere magazine, production delays and the resignation of Guillermo del Toro as director, returned Jackson to the director's bench. The result was three tapes that for, many must have been only one or two as planned by del Toro, he received severe criticism and complaints from the actors about the abuse of the CGI.

Dumb and Dumber

Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels are remembered remarkably by Dumb and Dumber (Bobby and Peter Farrelly, 1994), despite the success of the film its sequel only took 20 years to arrive! The 2014 film Dumb and Dumber To featured the same directors but it was not the same as the original. The protagonists had visibly aged and the transition between humor, two decades later, made it not work in the same way. In spite of it, the newspaper La Opinión emphasizes that the nostalgia was a decisive factor in the success in the ticket office, which ended up placing it like a success.