Hollywood is a pretty weird place. As soon as a film proves financially successful, plans are made for how exactly that popularity can be seized upon and exploited for as much profit as possible. Show business is a business, after all.
Now, that might sound a little sleazy, but it’s really not all that bad. Hollywood, like any other industry, just wants to maximize profits, so when a studio backs a winner, it’s only natural for them to want to milk it for all it’s worth. However, this quite often leads to ideas for new movies that are… well, awful.
After making a good movie, it’s only natural to consider a sequel. But when these sequel talks go too far, we end up with weird ideas that form dumb movie premises. Luckily, there’s occasionally someone with a little common sense on hand to make sure that the project doesn’t go ahead, and the films in question go unmade. Still, we’ve compiled 9 of the weirdest proposed sequels that thankfully never actually got made, and it’s pretty a wild ride.
9. Forrest Gump 2: Gump & Co.
After the colossal success of 1994’s Forrest Gump, a sequel seemed like a good idea. The author of the book Forrest Gump was based on even penned a sequel novel, following Forrest through the 1980s in the aftermath of the film’s popularity. Talks of adapting this follow-up – titled Gump & Co. – thankfully stalled, because it honestly sounded as though it would have been hot garbage.
Forrest Gump ends with the character raising his son, but Gump & Co. would have seen Gump go bankrupt and take on a string of jobs, including being a janitor, selling encyclopedias door-to-door, and helping invent New Coke. Forrest also would have become embroiled in the Gulf War, briefly worked with stockbrokers, and helped tear down the Berlin Wall. There was even reportedly an idea to have Gump help O.J. Simpson evade the police. Yikes.
As much as most of the story would have followed Winston Groom’s follow-up book, Gump & Co. sounds terrible. It seems as though the story would have just been designed to deliver more of the same, with Gump chancing into encounters with every major historical event in recent history. More isn’t always better, and Gump & Co. would only have served to undermine the original film’s charm.