The Rock Is Making a 'Big Trouble in Little China' Sequel
It's not a remake. It's a continuation. It's ... like "Jumanji"?
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is hot off the sequel/"continuation" "Jumaji: Welcome to the Jungle," which is getting its own sequel.
So it's not too surprising to hear that the plan for "Big Trouble in Little China" has changed to be something sorta like that.
It was first announced in 2015 that The Rock would produce and star in a remake of director John Carpenter's martial arts fantasy/comedy. According to TheWrap, Johnson was "making a deal to play Jack Burton, an all-American trucker who gets dragged into a centuries-old mystical battle in San Francisco’s Chinatown."
Kurt Russell played Jack Burton in the original movie. There was mass trepidation about a remake.
And then nothing seemed to happen on that front -- other than Dwayne Johnson making nine million other movies.
But Collider just chatted with producer Hiram Garcia, who is president of production at The Rock's Seven Bucks Productions. Garcia gave an update, saying there's a lot going on with the film -- which is no longer a remake:
"We are in the process of developing that, and let me tell you, the idea is not to actually remake 'Big Trouble in Little China.' You can’t remake a classic like that, so what we’re planning to do is we’re going to continue the story. We’re going to continue the universe of 'Big Trouble in Little China.' Everything that happened in the original exists and is standalone and I think there’s only one person that could ever play Jack Burton, so Dwayne would never try and play that character. So we are just having a lot of fun. We’re actually in a really great space with the story that we’ve cracked. But yeah, no remake. It is a continuation, and we are deep into development on that as well, and I think you’ll start hearing some things about that probably soon."
That does sound different from TheWrap's 2015 report. But you can imagine a lot might change in three years -- including the success of "Jumanji" setting a path to honor cult classics without remaking them.
But why do they say "continuation" instead of "sequel"? Is it not technically a sequel unless more original characters are involved? If it's just set in the same universe, with a tangential connection to the original, should we call that a "spinoff" instead? For now we're sticking with "sequel."
Semantics aside, guess we just have to wait to hear more about the plan. In the meantime, Johnson has "Jumanji 2" (technically the third "Jumanji" movie, but they're calling it "Jumanji 2" for now), the "Hobbs and Shaw" spinoff movie, and hundreds of millions of dollars.
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