Ron Howard is about to release Solo: A Star Wars Story, but it turns out Star Wars isn't the only franchise he's been meeting with Lucasfilm to discuss. 30 years ago Ron Howard directed Willow based on a story by George Lucas, and the director recently revealed that he has had conversations about potentially making a sequel to the cult classic. He even has at least the beginnings of an idea for the story, though his idea would focus on an entirely different character. According to Howard...
I don't want to give away too much, but there is a little talk of Willow. We wouldn't call it Willow 2, I think it would focus a lot on Elora Danan, although Willow would have to be significantly involved.
It makes a lot of sense. Any Willow sequel that went into production now would almost certainly need to be set decades after the original. At least if it expected to actually include the character played by Warwick Davis it would. As such, that also means that Elora Dana, the character who was as an infant in the first movie, will have grown up. Willow's plot revolved around a baby that was prophesized to defeat an evil queen, and while that has already taken place by the end of the movie, certainly anybody who did such a thing would continue to be an important person in the world. Elora Danan is the Harry Potter of her land, and she'd likely grow up with a lot of people expecting great things from her in much the same way. One also assumes that her connection to the man who saved her life would remain strong, which is why Willow as a character would remain important in a sequel.
Any serious fans of the Willow franchise know that there actually were sequels to the film already, in the form of a trilogy of novels written by Chris Claremont with George Lucas back in the 1990s. Those books did continue the story and saw Elora Danan grow up. However, it doesn't sound from what Ron Howard tells Comicbook.com that he's thinking of adapting those novels. This instead sounds like an entirely new idea, though one that simply goes in a similar direction.
It will be interesting to see what potentially comes of discussions around a Willow sequel. The original movie wasn't a massive hit, one of the reasons that theatrical sequels were never made, but it has certainly become a cult classic and as audiences have found the movie over time a strong following has built up around it, which perhaps means there are enough people interested in a sequel now that it could happen.
