Sequel Bits: 'Frozen 3', 'Pineapple Express 2', And What Could Have Been The Sequel To 'Atlantis: The Lost Empire'
In this edition of Sequel Bits:
Despite the second film's box office success, Disney has not officially announced plans to make a third Frozen film. But actor Josh Gad, who voices the summer-loving snowman Olaf in the movies, knows that Frozen 3 isn't totally out of the question.
"I mean, here's the deal," he told PopCulture. "Frozen II wasn't Frozen II until there was a reason to exist. And similarly, I don't know if and when there will be a Frozen III. That's way above my pay grade, but what I can tell you is this: There was an opportunity to take these characters and bring again a sense of hope and inspiration. And it's why the team at Disney and I teamed up on the past couple of weeks to do At Home with Olaf [...] And so the Frozen saga continues, even if it's not necessarily in the form of a third movie. But we'll see! If there's always a story worth telling, I'm sure that Jennifer Lee and the incredible team over at Disney Animation will tell that story one day."
Elsewhere in that interview, he revealed that he's "probably not" interested in a solo Olaf TV series, because separating him from the core group of other Frozen characters "doesn't necessarily feel warranted and doesn't necessarily feel earned." But he did say that he would be interested in "some series that would allow Olaf to recap other films like he does in Frozen II," trying to apply a scene many people loved in the sequel to other films. Sounds like a Disney+ show waiting to happen.
While making the press rounds for his latest movie, director Judd Apatow talked about a potential Pineapple Express sequel that never came to pass.
"I fought so hard to make a sequel to Pineapple Express for many years," he told LAD Bible. "I was a big proponent of it and I never could get it to fall together. I have an amazing idea for it and it deserves to happen, but I don't know if it will...There was so much happening with the legalization of marijuana in California and we thought there was a funny story about how they would deal with it – the pot dealer community having to handle the fact that suddenly it was legal." Sounds like the window may have closed for this one.
Meanwhile, the folks at Collider spoke with Atlantis: The Lost Empire director Kirk Wise, who explained that before Disney released a stitched-together version of Atlantis: Milo's Return straight to home video, he and his team were developing "a feature-length, full-on, full-blown sequel to Atlantis" that would have gone to theaters had the original movie performed better financially.
"We were going to have a new villain in the story," he said. "The villain was going to be wearing big, scary, wool, bulky, World War I-style clothing with a frightening gas mask to obscure its face; a little Darth Vader-esque. And this villain was going to try and retake Atlantis and finish the job that Rourke was unable to accomplish. And the big twist in the climax of the movie is that the villain is unmasked and it turns out to be Helga Sinclair. Plot twist!"
If you don't remember the first movie, Helga Sinclair was the German second-in-command to the original movie's primary villain, and she seemingly died at the end of the first film. "So Helga survived her fall, became an early-20th-century cyborg and started her own team of mercenaries," Wise explained. So it's time to sound off, Atlantis fans: would you have wanted to see that version of a sequel?