‘Spring Breakers’ sequel in the works, but can the fun continue?

The characters in Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” liked to vow “Spring Break Forever(a).” Now the refrain from last year’s artsploitation favorite looks as if it could come true--sort of.

The French sales and financing company Wild Bunch is putting together a follow-up to the Selena Gomez-Vanessa Hudgens foray into hedonism and will peddle it at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival market.

Titled “Spring Breakers: The Second Coming,” the new film will find its partygoing protagonists clashing with an extreme militant Christian sect trying to convert them, according to a report in industry trade Screen International.

But some caveats: Korine won’t be back as either writer or director -- the film will be directed by music-video veteran Jonas Akerlund from a script by Irvine Welsh. And it’s not clear how much of the original cast will return either. The smart money has James Franco, who famously played Alien in the film, sitting this out. Do the gold-toothed rapper-drug dealer thing once and it’s meta; try it again and it’s silly.

(Wild Bunch co-chief Vincent Maraval said the new movie would feature a combination of new and old cast members. “It’s not a direct sequel, although there are allusions to some of the characters in the original,” he said.)

And the biggest caveat of all: many Cannes packages don’t become movies. If sales thresholds aren’t reached and the financing doesn’t hit critical mass -- this happens often -- the movie goes away. Ditto if a star of filmmaker -- many of whom before a market attach themselves to more projects than they can or want to do on the assumption that at least a few won’t happen -- decides to opt out.

The original “Spring Breakers” was an idiosyncratic mix of art-house filmmaking and gratuitous titillation and violence. It became a cult hit and, somewhat predictably, polarized critics.

Given its notoriety, it’s not surprising backers would try to do it again. But don’t hold your breath on a movie, let alone a good one. Even a rager of a party can’t last forever.