Belated sequels: When it takes twenty years for part two...

If you’ve been waiting forever for a sequel to come out to your favorite movie, then 2024 may have been your year. There have already been two instances this year where a movie being released is a sequel to a movie that came out over twenty years ago. Twisters which came out in July is a sequel to the original Twister and was released 28 years after the original.

In September, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was released a whopping 36 years after the release of the original. And the year still isn’t over. In November Gladiator II will be released, coming to theaters 24 years after the first movie did. 

2024 has seen multiple legacy sequels

Of course, these movies have different approaches to how to create a sequel to a movie that came out more than two decades ago. Twisters barely has any connection to the first one save for a few Easter eggs concerning the storm tracking technology, and of course the fact that they’re both centered around tornados.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice on the other hand, brings back plenty of characters from the original movie, picking up with what has been happening to them over the thirty years between the two movies. Gladiator II seems to be doing something in the middle. While many of the big characters from the first movie can’t return (for obvious reasons), it still directly connects itself to the story of the first one by focusing on the next generation of characters. 

While plenty of franchise will go for long periods between installments (30 years between Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road, 14 between Jurassic Park 3 and Jurassic World, 29 years between the second and third Bill and Ted movie), it’s always interesting when a movie that has stood on it’s own for so long, suddenly becomes a part of a series when the second movie is released. 

Top Gun: Maverick proved this model successful

It can feel like this is happening more and more frequently over the past few years. Two years ago, Top Gun: Maverick was released 36 years after the first one was a success. In 2017, we finally got a sequel to Blade Runner 35 years after the first one was released. But that doesn’t mean this is necessarily a new phenomenon. In 1998, The Odd Couple II was released, with both Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau returning the the characters they had played in the first movie 30 years earlier.

Even as far back as the 1980s, you had movies that were sequels to movies from the 1960s.  In 1986, The Color of Money was released with Paul Newman reprising the same character he had played in The Hustler which was released in 1961, 25 years earlier. Psycho II was released in 1983, 23 years after the 1960 original. It seems like this is a phenomenon that has been around for some time. 

What is it that causes these sequels to finally hit the big screen after so many years of lying dormant? It’s not always the same. In some cases, such as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, we could have been hearing rumors about a possible sequel for years. As soon as the first movie was a hit, there was talk about a second Beetlejuice movie, and several different attempts at a sequel were put into development over the years, though they all fell apart.

Gladiator II is due out November 22

It seems like it just took this many years for the stars to align and for all the major players to hit upon an idea that they all liked. On the other hand, Twisters felt like it came out of nowhere. While there was some rumbling of a legacy sequel a few years back with Helen Hunt returning, that didn’t go anywhere.

As for Gladiator II, the journey from the first movie is one of the oddest production stories, as people tried to figure out a way to make a sequel to the first movie and came up with some rather unexpected solutions. (One possible attempt at Gladiator II featured the character forced to fight through every war in history.) 

So what happens next? When a sequel is finally made after twenty or more years, it seems like the first thing everybody wants to know is if there will be a third movie. Director Ridley Scott has already stated that he’s developing a script for a third Gladiator movie, though we’ll have to wait to see how well the second one does before that one can get made.

What the future holds...

On the other hand, director Tim Burton was hesitant to commit to a third Beetlejuice movie when asked about it. When asked about a possible third movie, Burton pointed out that if the third movie takes as long to make as the second movie, he’ll be close to 100 years old before it comes out.

Still, that quote came before the second movie was released, and was a big hit at the box office, so that might end up encouraging another movie to get pulled together sooner. And if they do, there’s a pretty good title for a third movie just waiting for them.