According to the actor who played Rufio in Hook, there is going to be a prequel to the 1991 movie (which starred Robin Williams as a grown-up amnesiac Peter Pan) that is all about Rufio! Dante Basco told Crave Online that this thing is actually “in development” and will be produced by an independent film company. You know who had an “independent film company”? Me. I made movies with my parents’ old video camera in the 1980s. While I wrote and performed the movie “independently,” my dad “filmed” it, and my mom watched it while keeping me “company.”
Basco, who played the ring leader of the Lost Boys and was the voice of Prince Zuko in Avatar: The Last Airbender, was at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (in which he starred in two movies, Hang Loose and Paradise Broken) last week where he shared some information about a bunch of dudes who wrote a Rufio movie and were going to try to make it. No, really! They also did a musical about Rufio in college, so now they’re going to bring their fan fiction to life on the big screen!
[T]here’s a film in development, the Rufio film, where a hotshot group of kids from the East Coast graduated and they wrote this whole script, the prequel to Hook and it’s the Rufio story. We have it right now with a director, Rpin Suwannath who’s doing the new Zorro for Fox. He has the script and he’s attached to the film and I’m attached to produce so that’s actually in development right now which’ll be cool, a Rufio for a whole new generation. …
These guys have a whole storyline of how he gets the Mohawk. The whole story’s crazy. These guys came with the script, I’m like, “You guys wrote this?” Not only did they write this, they did the musical in their college. They were going to go off Broadway with it and then they lost their insurance and they came to Hollywood. If anyone saw their play it’s that, but the newer version is pretty intense. They added more action. I never saw the play but I think they added more backstory to Rufio, like how he became Rufio which I was impressed by. It’s in development.
Riiiiight. Look, we’re psyched to see Basco carrying on the red-streaked torch that is Rufio; he runs a charity through his t-shirt company, Rufio Inc., which raises money for the real “lost boys” of the world — at-risk youth (which, of course, includes both girls and boys). And of course we’re even more psyched to know that this guy is still working (he’ll be in The Legend of Korra), because he was awesome! But this Rufio thing is just silly. I don’t know — maybe I just don’t feel like the world is ready for a Rufio movie, you guys. (But mostly, how are these filmmakers getting the rights to do this, exactly?)
As Basco said, he’s not intending to act in this thing because as we know, Rufio did not make it through Hook (sorry, I do not put spoiler alerts on 21-year-old movies), so he would not have had the opportunity to leave Neverland and grow up. But as cool as Basco probably is as a producer, it’s kinda doubtful that even clapping your hands will get this thing off the ground.
That said — Bangarang, everyone!
(Crave Online via Movieline)
