What do Zombieland and Showgirls have to do with one another? Well, in Zombieland the undead didn’t pole dance; they just ran. Wakka, wakka wakka! More to the point, both have been the subject of recent sequel talk. Which one has a sequel already in the process of development and which one is currently mere speculation? The riveting answer, after the break.

First up…it is Showgirls that is getting a sequel. Which manages to both boggle the mind and totally confirm everything I’ve always assumed about the market for getting films made. Name recognition is everything, and sequel-izing a piece of shit that everyone knows is a safer bet than financing a great new, unknown script.

JoBlo reports that the German trade Extratipp says writer/director Marc Volander has concocted Showgirls: Story of Hope, which focuses on a minor character from the original film. Story of Hope? It’s the stripper movie for the Obama era! Hope was played by Rena Riffel in Paul Verhoeven’s movie, and she’ll return for this one. Translated plotline reads as such:

It’s about stripper who died from a dose of contaminated cocaine. Her brother comes to Frankfurt to find the responsible and revenge.

Meanwhile, the rumors of a Zombieland sequel are already flowing. No surprise; the film didn’t cost much and has been a hit with critics and audiences. It’s one of the first features in a long time that really makes me want a sequel. I could easily spend a lot more time in that world with those characters. (Unbroken by the cameo; that scene was fun, sure, but really broke me out of the world that Ruben Fleischer had built so well.)

Evidently I’m not the only one ready for a sequel. Co-writer Paul Wernick told MTV last week, “Woody [Harrelson] came up to us after the final cut of the last scene and gave us a hug and said, ‘I’ve never wanted to do a sequel in the previous movies I’ve done until this one.’ ”

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that Wernick and co-writer Rhett Reese (who are also writing Venom for Sony) originally developed Zombieland as a TV series, with the first 45 minutes of the film more or less counting as material for the pilot. That being the case, you know they’ve got ideas enough to push another film through development pretty fast. If the numbers are right and everyone remains as upbeat about the project as they are now, it could happen. Maybe even as that TV series originally envisioned.