With so many superhero movies and novel adaptations out there keeping the Land of Sequels nice and populated, one can often be blindsided by the one-off films that major studios keep wanting to follow up on. Case in point: Miramax founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein have been talking for years about making sequels from such films as Rounders and the Best Picture winner Shakespeare in Love, despite all good sense going against those ideas. Well now they’re reteamed with Miramax after an eight-year split, and once again plan on developing both of those sequels, as well as dipping further into the Miramax well to create more sequels and TV shows based on existing properties. That cacophony of screeching you hear is "original thought" taking a rougher daily lashing than usual.
The deal between the Weinsteins and Miramax will span the next twenty years, as current Miramax owners Quatar Holding and Colony Capital are looking to turn the studio back into the powerhouse it was through the late 1990s and early 2000s. And to do this, they’re quickly putting Shakespeare in Love 2 (or whatever) and Rounders 2 into production, according to Deadline. They’ll also be looking to base a few TV series off of Good Will Hunting, Flirting With Disaster and Swingers, presumably to go along with the Scream series that’s being produced for MTV. How do you guys like all them apples?
Saying that he’s always wanted to make a Shakespeare sequel, Harvey Weinstein talked more about a second Rounders film. "I’ve discussed making Rounders 2 with Matt Damon and I would say that’s going to be instantaneous," he said, mentioning it would be more of an international story. "There might be a certain beautiful actress involved in it, and then we’re off to the racetrack and Vegas with Matty and Edward Norton and a new supervillain to replace John Malkovich." Who does he have in mind? Just Robert De Niro is all. And if they could somehow turn De Niro’s character into a relative of Malkovich’s Teddy KGB so that he’d have the same loony accent, I would throw all my money at this movie without a second’s hesitation.
The deal also includes a couple of scripts currently in development that aren’t based on movies all 14-year-olds were conceived after. The Alibi is a comedy written by Stephen Colbert that centers on a company that cleans up infidelity situations, while the other is The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, a story that was created by the Oscar-winning pair of Sydney Pollack and the late Anthony Minghella. Is it wrong that I’d rather see both of these get made before a couple of money-and-acclaim-grabbing sequels?
Take a few seconds out of your day to let us know which of these you’d be more interested in seeing in the poll below, and gear yourself up to see other actors taking over parts originally played by Ben Affleck, instead of the other way around.
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