As we learned with Speed 2: Cruise Control, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Blues Brother 2000, it’s impossible to make a bad sequel to a beloved classic. Who needs Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting when you’ve got Jackie Gleason and Mac Davis in The Sting 2? But Warner Brothers might test the limits of the flawless “sequel > original” theory if they go through with Casablanca 2.
A producer whose grandfather was a Warner Bros. co-founder, and whose uncle set the original film in motion, is trying to get the studio to finally make a sequel — based on a treatment written more than 30 years ago by Howard Koch, one of three writers who shared an Oscar for the original script. (Via)
Now, as every film junkie knows, Casablanca, a perfectly respectable choice for the greatest movies of all-time and one that makes every man want to be Humphrey Bogart, every woman Ingrid Bergman, and every bat boy Peter Lorre, already has a sort-of sequel: the 1996 Pam Anderson classic, Barb Wire. But even though Koch’s decades-in-the-making treatment doesn’t involve Big Fatso or Canada, here’s what his synopsis looks like:
After leaving Casablanca for America, Ilsa learned she was pregnant. She gave birth to a boy who grew up in America. The real father of the boy, it turns out, was not Laszlo but Rick.
He was conceived the night Ilsa came to Rick’s place to plead for the Letters of Transit . . . The secret was not kept from Laszlo, but being the kind of man he was and owing so much to Rick, he adopted the child and treated him as his own son.
The boy was named Richard, and he grew up to be a handsome, tough-tender young man reminiscent of his father. He had been told the truth about his origin and has a deep desire to find his real father, or at least more about him, since Rick’s heroic at actions in Casablanca have become legendary.’
Richard finds himself very much a stranger in the Arab world, a world now under Arab rule since the expulsion of the Germans and Vichy French who occupied Casablanca during the war.
…now, in 1961, a citizens movement led by an Arab woman who calls herself Joan is leading “guerrilla warfare” to track down “Nazi-led outlaws.” Richard eventually discovers his father’s fate. (Via)
But seriously, Big Fatso as Richard or GTFO. He can be played by Kevin James eating Steve Harvey.
Also, Steve Buscemi as Signor Ugarte’s son.
If both of those things happen, watch out Son of the Mask — you’ll be the best sequel ever no longer.