This year, three recent Best Picture nominees—Dune, Max Max: Fury Road, and Joker are back with a sequel or prequel—- Dune: Part 2, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, and Joker: Folie a Deux.
While Dune is just a continuation of the book series like Lord Of The Rings, the other two films are original stories from their pre-existing characters that were made following the acclaim of the first film. There were a lot more than I thought; The Miniver Story is an almost forgotten sequel to Mrs. Miniver, and French Connection II continues the story of Popeye Doyle chasing down the drug dealer that got away in the first film. Excluding those stories with pre-arranged sequels (Avatar, Star Wars) or sequel novels (The Color of Money), here are other sequels that came about from its Best Picture-placed forerunners.
The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
One year after winning Best Picture for Going My Way, director Leo McCarey and star Bing Crosby continued the story of Father Charles “Chuck” O’Malley as the new headmaster of St. Mary’s school. He is forced to team with the stubborn Sister Mary Benedict (Ingrid Bergman) to prevent the school from being closed down as a developer is looking to buy the land the school is on. It is a nearly forgotten Christmas movie, but it is still an old-fashioned dramedy with heart and was successful financially and critically with nine Oscar nominations (and one win for Best Sound) following.
Rocky II (1979)
After winning as the underdog for Best Picture three years earlier, the story of Rocky Balboa returned with Sylvester Stallone, who is now director, and everyone is returning to reclaim their roles. Rocky suddenly retired from the sport, but Apollo Creed, angered by accusations that the match from the previous film was fixed, demands a rematch to defeat Rocky without anyone questioning it. While it didn’t get any Oscar success, the box office numbers counted more with $200 million and the push for a third film, then a fourth, then a fifth (which really sucked), and finally a sixth film. Then came the Creed trilogy and Stallone’s Oscar nomination, his second as Rocky Balboa.
The Godfather III (1990)
The original Godfather was straight out of the book by Mario Puzo while Godfather Part II utilized the chapter of a young Vito Corleone mixed with an original story that pushed this mafia masterpiece along. Of course, both of the two films won Best Picture and established all the newcomers – Al Pacino, Robert DuVall, James Caan, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, and director Francis Ford Coppola – as megastars. So, of course, there had to be a third and final story to tie it up nicely. Coppola and Puzo wrote Part III based on the real-life scandal of the Vatican Bank as well as connected to the sudden death of Pope John Paul I. The plot, however, was criticized by most critics.
While it also got a Best Picture nomination, it is regarded as a total failure to what was a masterpiece series. Besides the fact that Sofia Coppola was a disaster playing Michael Corleone’s father (Winona Rider dropped out at the last minute), Robert DuVall did not come back to play Tom Hagen because of a salary dispute, so a new character played by George Hamilton was written in, but didn’t feel the same. On top of that, Coppola struggled to find an ending until late into post-production, and fought with Paramount Studios over his original title, The Death Of Michael Corleone. At least, The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, was a recut version of Part III and received more favorable reviews to the original cut.
The Two Jakes (1990)
It took years to get the sequel to Chinatown going, but the late Robert Towne returned with a new script, with former Paramount head Robert Evans producing it, and Jack Nicholson returning as Jake Gittes. It was a critical and commercial failure, but the story went back years earlier which affected the Nicholson, Towne, and Evans trio. Set a decade after the events in the first film, Jake Gittes has a client, also named Jake (Harvey Keitel), who kills his wife’s lover, and Gittes finds himself embroiled in something much bigger than a jilted lover.
The film was set to go ahead in 1985 with Evans playing the second Jake character, but after terrible screen tests, Towne, who was directing, told Evans he was being replaced days before the shoot. An angered Evans pulled his support from the film, calling off the movie, leading to lawsuits by unpaid members of the crew (sounds familiar) and Paramount taking a $4 million loss on the production. When it was brought back to life, Nicholson became the director and rewrote chunks of Towne’s script while Towne, out of the country, very slowly faxed back newly written scenes which forced the production to wait around, causing the budget to balloon higher than originally planned.
Babe: Pig In The City (1998)
While the first film was directly from the novel by Dick-King Smith, its sequel was an original story in which director George Miller (who co-scripted the first film; Chris Noonan was the director) took the characters and made a fresh tale. Here, with the farm in danger of being evicted, Babe is taken to a sheepdog herding contest where the money can be used to pay off the mortgage. But a comedy of errors leaves them stranded, and the pack, separated from their owner, must fend for themselves in Metropolis. It failed at the box office, and critics were more mild in its praise compared to the first film.
