The journey from a movie’s first concept to the finished product can take some strange and unexpected turns. Scripts get rewritten, characters disappear, studios change direction, and sometimes the movie that finally reaches the screen bears little resemblance to what was originally planned. In more than a few curious cases, it wasn’t even supposed to be its own movie at all.
Today, we’re looking at a handful of movies that started out as sequels to completely different films before being reworked, repurposed, and transformed into something else entirely.
Following the release of Lethal Weapon 3, Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver were eager to move forward with another sequel. A spec script by Jonathan Hensleigh caught their attention. Titled Simon Says, it involved an NYPD officer who becomes embroiled in a revenge plot involving a mad bomber who has planted explosives throughout the city.
But that wasn’t the beginning of the script’s story.
Simon Says had originally been picked up by 20th Century Fox as a potential vehicle for Brandon Lee, possibly even as a sequel to Rapid Fire. Angela Bassett would have starred alongside him as a community activist who helps track down the bombs. However, Lee’s tragic death on the set of The Crow put an end to those plans, and the script went back on the shelf.
That’s when Warner Bros. came calling. It’s not hard to imagine Murtaugh and Riggs butting heads and trading fast-talking quips as they race across the city trying to stop the bomber. Since Fox still owned the script, Warner Bros. attempted to acquire it for Lethal Weapon 4, but the deal didn’t happen. The Lethal Weapon sequel remained in development for several more years and wouldn’t reach theaters until 1998.
But Simon Says didn’t stay buried. The script was eventually revamped as Die Hard with a Vengeance. The NYPD officer became John McClane, while Angela Bassett’s community activist evolved into Zeus Carver, played by Samuel L. Jackson. The mad bomber was also rewritten as Simon Gruber, the brother of Hans Gruber, the villain from the original Die Hard.
David Fincher’s Se7en was one of the best crime thrillers of the ’90s, a superbly stylish serial-killer mystery that absolutely did not need a sequel.
So, naturally, Hollywood tried to make one.
The spec script for Solace, written by Ted Griffin and Sean Bailey, was originally picked up by Fox 2000 Pictures in 1998, just three years after the release of Se7en. Nothing happened with it for several years, until New Line Cinema acquired the project in 2001. The story revolved around a doctor with psychic abilities who is enlisted by law enforcement to help track down a serial killer with similar powers.
New Line eventually began developing the script as a sequel to Se7en, which they planned to call… Ei8ht. Ugh. The idea was to replace the psychic doctor with Detective William Somerset, with hopes that Morgan Freeman would return to the role. That would have meant giving Somerset psychic powers, which sounds like a pretty wild departure from Se7en.
Fincher had absolutely no interest in returning for the sequel, memorably saying, “I would have less interest in that than I would in having cigarettes put out in my eyes.“
Thankfully, the connections to Se7en were eventually removed, and Solace returned to being a standalone movie. That didn’t mean its trip to the screen suddenly became any easier. The project went through numerous directors and cast members over the years, with Bruce Willis attached at one point, before Anthony Hopkins finally signed on to play the psychic doctor opposite Colin Farrell as the serial killer.
Solace was eventually released in 2015, nearly two decades after the script was first sold. And after all that waiting, critics weren’t exactly kind.
Although Masters of the Universe was considered a critical and commercial disappointment, Cannon Films still believed a sequel could work. The studio began moving forward with Masters of the Universe 2, but Dolph Lundgren wasn’t interested in returning, so surfer Laird Hamilton was cast as the new He-Man.
But Cannon had an even more ambitious plan. Not only would the company make a Masters of the Universe sequel, but it would also shoot it back-to-back with what could have been the first live-action Spider-Man movie.
Albert Pyun was tasked with directing both films, and the proposed shooting schedule was certainly unusual. “The concept was to shoot 2 weeks of Spider-Man first,” Pyun explained in a 2005 interview. “The section of Peter Parker’s story before he was bitten. Then we would shoot 6 weeks of Masters 2.“
The actor playing Peter Parker (Pyun couldn’t recall who was cast) would spend that time following an intensive workout regimen, bulking up for his transformation into Spider-Man. Once Masters of the Universe 2 wrapped, production would return to Spider-Man.
This wasn’t just wishful thinking, either. Costumes and sets had already been created for Masters of the Universe 2, while portions of New York City had been constructed for Spider-Man. Unfortunately, just two weeks before shooting was scheduled to begin, Cannon’s licensing arrangements with Marvel and Mattel fell apart.
By that point, roughly $2 million had already been spent. Rather than letting all those costumes, props, and sets go to waste, Pyun proposed creating an entirely new movie that could make use of them. He wrote the first draft of what would become Cyborg over a single weekend.
“What I remember most from the film was exhaustion,” Pyun later recalled. “The turnabout from prepping to shoot Spider-Man and Masters 2 to writing and shooting Cyborg was punishing.“
Pyun originally wanted Chuck Norris for the leading role, but Cannon suggested Jean-Claude Van Damme, who had recently starred in Bloodsport.
In the end, it all probably worked out for the best. Cyborg cost less than $500,000 to make—not counting what Cannon had already spent on Masters of the Universe 2 and Spider-Man—and went on to gross around $10 million.
One of Gene Hackman’s most iconic roles was Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection, the rough-edged police detective willing to do just about anything to crack a case. The 1971 movie was a huge success, earning roughly $75 million worldwide and winning five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Hackman.
A sequel, French Connection II, followed in 1975, but it didn’t enjoy the same level of success. Despite that, development began on a third installment. David Shaber wrote a script that would have found Popeye Doyle teaming up with a wisecracking cop—Richard Pryor was reportedly considered for the role—as they investigated a case involving international terrorists.
There was just one problem: Gene Hackman wasn’t interested in playing Popeye Doyle again. With Hackman unwilling to return, The French Connection III was scrapped, but the script didn’t disappear. It was reworked into Nighthawks, with Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams playing NYPD detectives transferred to a newly formed anti-terrorist squad.
Rutger Hauer made his American film debut as international terrorist Wulfgar, just one year before Blade Runner, while Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s Persis Khambatta played his associate, Shakka Holland.
Nighthawks became a modest success and has since developed a reputation as one of Stallone’s more underrated movies.
Although The French Connection III never happened, Popeye Doyle did eventually return. A 1986 made-for-TV movie simply titled Popeye Doyle featured future Married… with Children star Ed O’Neill taking over the role from Hackman.
Following the release of Léon: The Professional, Luc Besson began developing a sequel centered on Natalie Portman’s character, Mathilda. Besson wanted to wait until Portman was older before making the movie, so the project sat on the shelf for several years.
Unfortunately, a rather significant complication emerged in the meantime. Besson left Gaumont Film Company and founded his own studio, EuropaCorp. Gaumont still controlled the rights to The Professional, and the company wasn’t about to give them up. Rather than lose the project entirely, Besson eventually reworked many of his ideas for Mathilda into Colombiana. The 2011 action thriller starred Zoe Saldaña as Cataleya, an assassin seeking revenge against the people responsible for murdering her family.
Olivier Megaton directed Colombiana, but he had already been involved with the project when it was still intended to follow Mathilda. “Ten years ago we decided to make Mathilda, which was the Professional sequel, but we couldn’t do it because of the evolution of a lot of things – about Natalie [Portman], about [estranged distributor] Gaumont,” Megaton told IndieWire in 2011.
It’s hard not to wonder what the original version might have looked like. Seeing a grown-up Natalie Portman return to Mathilda could have been fascinating, although there’s no guarantee she would have agreed to come back. Portman has since described her relationship with The Professional as “complicated,” even as she acknowledges that the movie launched her career.