And no, it's not April Fool's Day. Seriously, is there any franchise Hollywood would be ashamed to resurrect?
Fans of The Hustler had to wait 25 years for The Color Of Money . It was a whopping 47 years before The Wizard Of Oz got a follow-up with Return To Oz . And now, nearly 70 years after the original It's A Wonderful Life , that classic Christmas tale of angels and second chances, is getting a sequel – a sequel that approximately zero people were crying out for.
According to Variety , the producers of It's A Wonderful Life: The Rest Of The Story are aiming to get the follow up into cinemas for Christmas 2015. It'll focus on the "unlikeable grandson" of the original George Bailey (the role made famous by James Stewart), who'll learn how much better the world would have been if he'd never been born. This information will be supplied by a visiting angel.
Giving the sequel some unexpected continuity with the original, Karolyn Grimes (who played George Bailey's daughter "Zuzu" back in 1946 – the one who said "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings!") will play the aforementioned visitor from heaven. The producers are also talking to other survivors of the original movie (Jimmy Hawkins, who played Tommy Bailey, and Carol Coombs, who played Janie Bailey) about reprising their roeles
“The storyline of the new film retains the spirit of the original – every life is important as long as you have friends,” said writer/producer Bob Farnsworth.
