Friday, November 24, 2006
It's Probably Just as Well
FRANK CAPRA - WONDERFUL LIFE SEQUEL SCRAPPED: "Legendary director FRANK CAPRA hoped to delight film fans across the globe with a sequel to his holiday classic IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, but the project was inexplicably shelved. The late moviemaker planned to use the stars, JIMMY STEWART and DONNA REED, of the 1946 film for the follow-up, which would track their progress 20 years on. His son FRANK CAPRA JR tells PageSix.com, 'My father and Jimmy were talking about it. 'GEORGE BAILEY (Stewart's character) would now be retired, and the story would involve a big conflict between him and his older son. 'They really wanted to make the sequel to show how the characters were doing, but it never happened.' It's A Wonderful Life charts frustrated Bailey's encounter with an angel who shows him what life would had been like if he never existed."
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3 comments:
Best follow up to IT'S A
WONDERFUL LIFE - David Thomson's novel SUSPECTS. Told as a series of biographical sketches of what happens to various characters of noir and classic films. (Noah Cross of CHINATOWN dies in the saddle with Matty from BODY HEAT - which is why she had to go on the run and hide.) Lots of fun.
I must say that I'm actually glad this never came to fruition. I love 'Its a Wonderful Life', I don't need a sequel to taint it in any way.
I would probably have been less unhappy with a sequel to It's A Wonderful Life than I have been with other sequels proposed - and sometimes made - to books and movies over the years. I'm particularly thinking of that abortion that was made as a sequel to Gone With The Wind. If Margaret Mitchell had written a sequel to GWTW then it would be acceptable but she wrote a self contained story that didn't need a sequel. Capra might have created an awful sequel to IAWL (a movie I confess I'm not in love with) but he would have more of a right to do so than any outsider.
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