8 Unsolicited Movie Sequel and Prequel Pitches
Get ready to meet the future of cinema
In 1981, just 16% of the most popular movies were sequels, spinoffs or remakes. In 2019, 80% were.
Since it’s clear where Hollywood is going, I’ve decided to hop out and help push. Here are some screenplays I expect to see greenlit in the next decade.
Jurassic Park Origins: Nedry
Sure, we all know that Newman, I mean Nedry meets his untimely end by running into the business end of a Dilophosaurus, but have you ever wondered what his earlier life was like? It’s the story you’ve been waiting to see brought to life for three decades ever since Jurassic Park debuted, right? Right!?
Too bad, we’ve already started shooting. We meet Shia LaBeouf as a young Dennis Nedry trying to make a name for himself in the nascent computer programming community in Cambridge Massachusetts. Now I know you’re probably hoping we’ll answer some key questions like:
What kind of personal life and redeeming qualities did Nedry have before he became so insufferable?
What mistake did Nedry make that upset John Hammond so much in Jurassic Park?
How did Nedry got into such a desperate financial position that he had to resort to corporate espionage?
So we should tell you now that we’re not covering any of that. Instead, we’re going to spend a confusing amount of runtime on a shoehorned love triangle between Nerdy Nedry, and two sexy computer programmers played by Anya Taylor Joy and Evangeline Lily. But don’t worry, fans, we found a way to incorporate your favorite line from the original in a bit of intertextuality that will have you running to the bathroom to change your underwear:
“Ah ah ah, you didn’t say the magic word!”
Captain Marvel v. Captain Philips: The Love Boat
The Marvel multi-verse sure has gotten a bit confusing and muddled, huh? Well hold on to your butts because it’s about to jump the shark. While patrolling the universe for threats, Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel runs into none other than Captain Richard Philips, portrayed by Tom Hanks. After surviving a Somali Pirate attack while aboard the Maersk Alabama in 2009, he’s living a quiet life at home. Captain Marvel ends all of that when she strolls into town.
Thanks to a typo in an email, she believes he’s the one responsible for exterminating a small planet of sentient Monstera plants near the Kree home planet of Hala. So she has no choice but to immediately start kicking his ass instead of asking any follow up questions. At first Captain Marvel and Captain Philips fight in some truly awkward CGI with overly dim lighting that makes Tom Hanks look confusingly buff. Then, they decide to team up and ultimately fall in love.
Is the tone a bit all over the place? Sure. Is the idea of Captain Marvel fighting a shipping boat captain a bit lopsided? Yeah, but so is Captain Marvel fighting anyone. We’re confident this muddled mess of a film will still be better than any DC Extended Universe movie in the past fifteen years.
The Shawshank Reunion: Fiesta in Zihuatanejo
Andy and Red are back and having the time of their lives running a surf shop in a coastal Mexican town, but when some bratty teenagers challenge them to a surfing competition, they have to put it all on the line and show the world that they can still shred. As Andy puts it: “It’s time to put the dank back in Shawshank!” Narrated by Roseanne Barr and featuring a rocking score composed entirely by Nickleback, this cheeky reunion of one of the 90s most iconic male duos put to film will have fans of the original cheering and reaching for the cerveza.
Tár 2: Manila Drift
After the critically acclaimed 160 minute master class in cerebral character acting that was Tár, what could be better than a sequel that takes the franchise in a bold new direction? This time, instead of methodically exploring power dynamics in classical music, dissecting the performance of intellectual expertise, and bringing to life the tense dichotomy between the cultural feasibility of separating art from the artist and the aesthetic and philosophical tradeoffs of doing so, we’re doing another Point Break knock off. We reunite with Lydia Tár in the Philippines. After a rousing performance of the Monster Hunter score in front of a bunch of cosplayers, she gets approached by a member of the Manila underground drift racing scene. What starts as a job composing music for their highlight videos on Youtube rapidly spirals into a life of burning rubber, thrilling car chases, and slow-mo shots of boobs & butts. We’ve already sketched out an action set piece of a heavily modded Camaro with chainsaws bolted to the grill driving into mouth of a Megalodon. The Chainsmokers have already agreed to compose the score, it ends with a literal cliffhanger, and will feature a post-credits scene featuring a cameo from none other than Vin Diesel. Since we already anticipate Cate Blanchett turning this film down due to the subpar script, we’ve gone ahead and pre-cast Kirsten Stewart as Lydia Tár.
The Fast & the Furious: Zlatan’s Revenge
That’s right, egotistical soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic is making his feature film debut in the next Fast & Furious film. Honestly, it was only a matter of time until Zlatan got involved in this franchise. It seems to attract beefy men with huge egos like moths to a flame. Who said having Vin Diesel, The Rock, Jason Statham, John Cena, and Jason Momoa was too many leading men? Not us. There is no upper limit for brawny male leads in a franchise like this. Anyhow, Zlatan will fit right in since he has a built-in rabid fanbase, the athletic build necessary to look great in fight choreography and posters, and is already convinced he’s God’s gift to the world.
What’s the plot of this one, you ask?
Haha! Good one.
Okay fine: Family.
The Hobbit 4 (Part 1 of 7): Just stopping by to see if there’s any more money
After the end of the events of The Hobbit, but before the start of the Fellowship of the Ring, there are still some unexplored crevices of Middle Earth to put profit off of, we mean film. This opening film in the intermezzo sept-ilogy bridging the two trilogies explores key details fans have definitely been dying to know about like:
What book was Frodo reading when Gandalf arrived?
Could the Hobbits have their own version of The Great British Baking Show? We’re asking for Paul Hollywood who seems keen to be cast in this one.
How did Legolas’s quest to go find Strider go? Did they end up carpooling to Rivendell for the council of Elrond? Do all elves commute via giant elk like Thranduil?
Where did Radagast the Brown go, anyway? We’re envisioning depicting him heading to Burning Man after The Battle of the Five Armies and just sorta riding off into the sunset on the Playa. That way he’ll be too high on the halfling’s leaf to help Gandalf out when Saruman turns out to be evil and really good at spinning people around with his staff.
Avatar 3: The Way of Profitability
It’s time to open up Pandora’s box once again! Jake Sully and his Philip Rivers-sized family are back to square off against walking military stereotype Miles Quaritch. To up the drama, both sides have learned exactly zero lessons from their last encounter. Sully’s children are still surprisingly easy to repeatedly kidnap, often left unguarded in random parts of the forest and ocean just to tempt fate and rogue military types. Meanwhile Quaritch is unable to ever just kill Sully outright, so this movie can explore Cameron’s latest ecological parable. Having covered the rainforest and whales, respectively, Cameron now masterfully highlights the ecological importance of 3D film projects shot on green screens in New Zealand.
No matter who loses the conflict, two things will be clear: Quaritch won’t be killed off because James Cameron doesn’t know how to write another villain, and Cameron will make enough money that he can build his own Bezos-style penis rocket and head out and see if Pandora just might be a real place. If he’s right you can bet the tech set will uproot from their new mansions in “climate-proof” New Zealand and take flight for Pandora, too.
United Passions 2: 2 United 2 Be Corrupt
After the….let’s call it mixed…reception of 2015’s United Passions, a cynical vanity project from FIFA’s PR department masquerading as a film made by real human beings, a sequel feels overdo. What’s United Passions, you ask? Ah yes, it did seem like very few people actually saw this one judging by the astounding box office haul of $168,832 and 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. I bet you didn’t even know we got Sam Neil and Gérard Depardieu to agree to star in this ham-fisted boondoggle. So, to quickly summarize, it’s the movie-like-experience that one reviewer described as: “A bloated historical diorama of FIFA office-life highlights. A ghastly, stiff orgy of self-love. It's like watching blank celluloid and hoping a movie will magically appear. Warning: you may consider melon-balling your eyes out.”
Sounds like fertile ground to revisit if you ask us. Since the original only grossed $9 in Phoenix Arizona on it’s opening weekend, meaning that literally only one person saw it, there’s no where to go but up! In this film, which FIFA and the Azerbaijani government have generously agreed to finance yet again, we cover the period in the late aughts when the 2022 FIFA World cup was given to Qatar. With dialog that our consultants have assured us is “kind of Aaron Sorkin-esque,” we’ll dramatize the tense discussions that led to this historic, widely criticized, and deeply misunderstood decision. This will teach the audience some amazing, never before seen, 100% true real facts.
We first meet Abdul, a fictionalized migrant worker in Qatar who we swear is based on a real person, who has an impassioned monologue about how the dangerous task of building these stadiums is actually his lifelong dream. We also get to know a bunch of smiling Qatari businessmen and government officials with beautiful families who seem totally above board. Finally, a cameo that’s clearly a Zoom interview with Cristiano Ronaldo sitting in front of a pile of money makes it clear that all of the players were actually delighted to have the tournament moved from summer to winter since they secretly hated their predictable club schedules and really wanted a desert soccer vacation instead. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell even shows up at Ronaldo’s apartment to share that he’s seriously considering moving the Jacksonville Jaguars to Qatar since it’s clearly such a great country for sports. The film ends with the triumphant opening ceremony of the 2022 World Cup, where fans appear visibly delighted by the lack of beer since it will help them focus on the soccer and shining reputation of the Qataris, then…
Oh, wait, no— you’re leaving the pitch already? Please come back, I swear we’ve learned our lesson!
Seriously, hear us out, what about a 50 Shades of Gray spinoff directed by Wes Anderson: “The Erotic Encounters of a Melancholy Beige Man…”
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