Truth Is as Strange as These Sequels

The other night I had a terrible dream. I’d gone to see “Austin Powers in Goldmember,” but instead of showing the movie, the theater just ran one long Taco Bell commercial. Some people would say I wasn’t dreaming.

It’s the height of the summer movie season, a season when movies are products created to sell other products. According to Newsweek, “Scooby-Doo” got a green light when Warner Bros.’ consumer products division told the studio’s film executives the movie could bring in $30 million in profits from stuffed animals and coloring books alone. The abysmal movie did so well the studio’s already commissioned a sequel.

At a time when familiarity trumps originality, every studio is in the franchise business. Twentieth Century Fox, which has “X-Men 2” due next summer, is at work on “Alien vs. Predator,” based on the earlier films and a popular video game. Paramount, which will shoot a second installment of “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” this fall, is gearing up for a new installment of “Indiana Jones” and even trying to turn Michael Caine into a franchise, remaking “The Italian Job” (1969) and “Alfie” (1966).

Disney has “The Santa Clause 2” and a “Shanghai Noon” sequel, “Shanghai Knights,” due out later this year, with sequels to “The Jungle Book” and “Coyote Ugly” in the works. Universal is doing a new version of “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957), as well as sequels to “Pitch Black,” “The Fast and the Furious” and “Meet the Parents.” Sony has a new version of “I Spy” coming, plus sequels to “Charlie’s Angels,” “XXX” (in the works before the first one is released), “Bad Boys” and “Spider-Man,” which already has a release date--May 7, 2004--before a script has even been finished.

Warner Bros., home to the “Harry Potter” series, is brimming with sequels and remakes, including “The Matrix Reloaded,” “Analyze That,” “Cats and Dogs 2,” “Batman vs. Superman,” “Westworld” and (gasp!) “Starsky and Hutch.” Even Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein, once the king of independent film, has been buying up youth-oriented bestsellers left and right, hoping to generate a trilogy like “The Lord of the Rings,” the smash hit that Weinstein sold off to New Line in return for a piece of the profits, while Miramax’s Dimension division gets ready to release “Spy Kids 2.”

The only problem is that the studios have been churning out so many sequels and remakes that they’re running low on available product. I recently intercepted a memo commissioned by a producer with close ties to several studios whose researcher has just dug up a long list of new possibilities. Try to guess which one is an actual development project. (Answer at column’s end.)

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Dear Boss:

Just as we thought, the pickings are slim. Warners is already remaking “The In-Laws” and has a guy writing an “Ocean’s Eleven” sequel (I hear it’s a low-budget thing where they rob a card club in Gardena); Paramount is doing “The Stepford Wives,” and MGM is working on a new installment of “The Thomas Crown Affair.” We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, but here are a few possibilities:

“The Seventh Sense”: An inside-Hollywood comedy, the seventh sense being the sinking feeling you get in your tummy when you know your movie’s going to bomb before it comes out. (Elie Samaha could handle the financing.) The main story focuses on Bruce Willis as he tries to figure out who persuaded him to do “Bandits” and “Hart’s War.” We’ve already got some great footage of Bruce dangling an MGM marketing executive out of a 10-story window. There’s also a great running gag where we see Eddie Murphy at the press junket for “The Adventures of Pluto Nash,” trying to count how many movies he made between the time it was shot and finally reached the theaters.

“Munsters Inc.”: Here’s a timely remake: Desperate to boost its fourth-quarter earnings, a scandal-plagued oil company hires Herman, Lily, Grandpa and Eddie Munster as sales reps to scare people into buying more Lincoln Navigators. (Note to product-placement team: One of those Navigators goes to me if we get this off the ground.) Our plan is to go hip-hop with the casting: Shaquille O’Neal was born to play Herman, Macy Gray is perfect for Lily, Bow Wow could do Eddie in his sleep and, for Grandpa, we’re negotiating a computer-generated comeback deal with the Redd Foxx Estate.

“The Last, Last, Last Action Heroes”: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sly Stallone and Steven Seagal play semiretired CIA operatives working as airport security screeners who stumble onto a hostage drama at the McDonald’s at LAX’s Terminal One. With nothing more at their disposal than Southwest Air luggage carts, security wands and a big bag of frozen potatoes, they rescue a diabetic preschooler from his dad, who’s in a suicidal funk after the breakup of his marriage and feeding his son Cinnabons by the dozen. (This is a part we should obviously offer to Billy Bob Thornton right away--maybe we can get Angelina Jolie to do a cameo as his ex.) The marketing potential here is enormous: PMK says we could easily get a Modern Maturity cover story with this lineup.

“Eight”: If Universal can do another Hannibal Lecter thriller we can pull off a sequel to “Seven.” Morgan Freeman returns as a psychic detective tracking a serial killer with psychic powers who has an especially deadly modus operandi--he’s been bumping off telephone psychics with consecutive 8’s in their phone numbers. I don’t know about you, but I see 8’s in our future, as in an $88-million opening weekend! A bonus: When we release our DVD with all the outtakes and extras, we can give it a classy marketing hook by calling it “8 1/2.”

“Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia”: Sam Peckinpah was run out of town for making this grisly revenge saga back in 1974, but now that “Austin Powers” can do dozens of excrement, flatulence and penis jokes and still get a PG-13, this is the perfect time for a remake. The story revolves around a hustler who goes grave-digging after a wealthy Mexican man offers a $1-million reward for the skull of the interloper who seduced his daughter. We’ve got Benicio del Toro on board as the hustler and a video director with the perfect resume to film someone driving around with a severed head in his front seat--he shot Marilyn Manson’s music videos.

“My Big Fat Greek Murder Mystery”: There’s no time to lose on this sequel--the original is still doing amazing business. On the rebound from a disastrous marriage, Nia Vardalos is a frumpy Greek detective hired by a wealthy gubernatorial candidate (Jesse Ventura is available!) whose campaign is going so badly that he becomes the leading suspect when the incumbent governor dies after eating a poisoned chicken wing at a political fund-raiser. Fueled by huge portions of dolmas and tzatziki made by her Old World mother (once again Lainie Kazan), Nia falls madly in love with her client, getting him off the hook on the murder rap, even though he eventually goes to jail for using an illegal feta cheese tax shelter.

“Married to the Gay Mafia”: A remake of Jonathan Demme’s quirky 1988 thriller “Married to the Mob,” this comedy chronicles the misadventures of a homophobic Hollywood talent agent who wakes up one day to discover that his hot new client is not only gay, but also madly in love with him. When the agent (Charlie Sheen) discovers that every other gay agent in town is putting the moves on his client (Rupert Everett, of course) he’s forced to spend a verry long, hot weekend at a rave party in Palm Springs trying to keep him out of the rival agencies’ clutches.

(Answer: The real sequel project is “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.”)

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