Is Roger Rabbit 2 Ever Going To Happen Or Has The Sequel Been Dipped?
Ariel and her aquatic friends may have ushered in the Disney Renaissance, but Roger Rabbit helped right the sinking ship that was Disney in the '80s. Indeed, 1988's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" came at the perfect time for the House of Mouse. After a string of failed (but fascinating) attempts to reinvigorate its artistry, the flailing studio recruited director Robert Zemeckis and executive producer Steven Spielberg — members of the same crack team behind "Back to the Future" just three years before — to adapt Gary K. Wolf's satirical 1981 novel "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?" into a film.
The result? An incredible visual feat by way of a detective yarn based in a fantasy version of '40s Los Angeles where "toons" from the Golden Age of American Animation walk alongside flesh-and-blood humans. With Zemeckis operating at the height of his powers, "Roger Rabbit" moves like clockwork, serving up a mystery that's not only a playful homage to the works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, it's also a dynamite blend of intrigue and social commentary in its own right.
After "Roger Rabbit" grossed $351 million against a $70 million budget and took home a trio of Oscars (including one for its ground-breaking visual effects), you can bet your cartoon booties — preferably the un-Dipped variety — Disney wanted more. 35 years later, though, Roger Rabbit has yet to return to the silver screen, save for his appearances in a handful of theatrical shorts made in the late '80s and early '90s. Yet, to this day, the dark ride Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin is a mainstay at Disneyland, and even the nightmare-inducing Judge Doom showed up during the 2023 Oogie Boogie Bash in Disney California Adventure.
Does that mean "Roger Rabbit 2" could still happen? Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Why hasn't Roger Rabbit 2 happened yet?
Plans for "Roger Rabbit 2" date back to 1989, when J.J. Abrams (then but a humble writer-for-hire) was approached by Spielberg about penning a sequel. Even at the time, though, the plan was to produce a Roger Rabbit short before tackling a feature-length follow-up. "We were writing an outline, but it honestly went away before it was anything," Abrams recalled years later.
Development of "Roger Rabbit 2" would begin in earnest in the 1990s. Titled "Roger Rabbit 2: The Toon Platoon," the project was actually a prequel in which Roger set off to find his biological parents after his adopted human parents inform him that he's "secretly" not human — a setup Disney essentially recycled a decade later in "The Country Bears." (Please don't ask me how I know that.) The film would have also revealed how Roger met his then-future wife Jessica and was forced to venture behind enemy lines after she was kidnapped by the Nazis during WWII. However, a post-"Schindler's List" Spielberg's discomfort with the film's cartoonish depiction of Nazis led to him stepping down as a producer, causing it to fall apart.
Then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner would later revive the film in 1997, at which point the Nazi sub-plot was jettisoned. The sequel would even get so far as to shoot test footage combining live-action material with updated animation techniques for Roger before it was canned again, this time over budget concerns (you can watch some brief test footage in this video by Yesterworld Entertainment). As "Roger Rabbit" producer Don Hahn explained in 2003:
"It was never in the cards, we could never get the planets back into alignment. There was something very special about that time when animation was not as much in the forefront as it is now."
Everything Robert Zemeckis has said about Roger Rabbit 2
Just as the earlier iteration of "Roger Rabbit 2" was winding down, Zemeckis was gearing up to enter his motion-capture phase as a filmmaker. This was also around the same time that he gained a newfound interest in making a "Roger Rabbit" sequel, which led to him developing a fresh script with "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" writers Peter Seaman and Jeffrey Price. He had even roped Bob Hoskins into reprising his role from the original as hardened gumshoe Eddie Valiant, stating in 2009:
"I'm really committed to getting this art form [motion-capture] off of the ground, but of course, I would [shoot live-action again] and I'm never going to say never to anything, but right now though I really want to make sure that we get this out there so that younger filmmakers have these absolutely breathtaking tools that they can use."
Perhaps it's for the better that Zemeckis' version of "Roger Rabbit 2" hasn't happened yet. As his comments here illustrate, the director has become far more invested in the technical side of filmmaking than storytelling (or even just saying something of personal meaning) in the 21st century, to the degree that most of his films nowadays come across as a glorified excuse for him to play with his shiny new toys. Even Hoskins' death in 2014 wasn't enough to extinguish Zemeckis' enthusiasm for the "Roger Rabbit" sequel, which he's described as "moving on from film noir to the world of the 1950s." He's also mentioned the idea of bringing back Eddie as a ghost. If you just had a flashback to the eerie, uncanny CGI used to bring the late Harold Ramis to life as a ghost in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," you have my sympathies.
What the death of Touchstone Pictures means for Roger Rabbit 2
While promoting his 2018 film "Welcome to Marwen" (which is proof positive of everything I just said about him), Zemeckis admitted there's not really a place for "Roger Rabbit 2" at Disney right now:
"I don't know where it fits [into] their universe. There's no princess in it, so I don't know where that would be. There's a wonderful script sitting at Disney that is really good, but I don't think it's on their radar."
This feels like a good place to note that "Roger Rabbit" was released through Touchstone Pictures, a label Disney used for films that were either meant for adults or, in the case of "Roger Rabbit," a little too risque for the Disney banner. Since retiring the label in 2018, the House of Mouse has instead used its Fox acquisitions (20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures) to distribute older-skewing films, many of which are released directly to streaming (like "Prey" and "No One Will Save You"). The problem is that "Roger Rabbit" is strongly associated with the rest of Disney's animated filmography, so much so it's difficult to imagine, say, 20th Century Studios releasing a sequel.
Obviously, Disney could elect to simply make "Roger Rabbit 2" as a proper Disney film ... and given how heavily the studio has been banking on nostalgia lately (even more than it did back when the original "Roger Rabbit" came out), that doesn't seem like an impossibility. I'm not saying it should; goodness knows the first film holds up exceedingly well as a standalone story (not to mention, Bob Hoskins as Eddie and his dynamic with Roger are utterly irreplaceable). Still, so long as audiences are nostalgic for "Roger Rabbit," we can never fully rule out a return to Toontown.