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:
