This summer Bob Hoskins officially retired from acting, dashing the hopes of many for a Hook prequel featuring Dante Basco‘s triumphant return to the role of Rufio –
Wait, that’s a thing I just made up? Nobody’s making a Hook sequel? Actually Bob Hoskins retiring means he probably won’t return for the Who Framed Roger Rabbit? sequel?
Okay.Â
Sorry, I can’t muster much outrage for either the idea of a Roger Rabbit sequel without Eddy Valiant, or the idea of a Roger Rabbit sequel. The latter, because it doesn’t seem very likely. According to Robert Zemeckis:
I have a script at Disney, and we’re just waiting for all the executive changes to settle down there.
So… basically if this film was a baby, it’s parents would still be quickly looking away and blushing whenever their eyes accidentally met in the laundromat. But I can’t even get upset at the idea of somebody else replacing Bob Hoskins as Eddie.
Because I’d much rather see a Roger Rabbit sequel that takes place in an entirely different era. See, the original movie takes place when cartoons were at their heyday, and America was in the dumps. Lets put a Roger Rabbit sequel in an entirely different era of animation: the 80s. That’s right. Stick it right in the middle of the Disney slump, when ex-Mouse House animators were founding new studios and making blockbuster movies left and right, when anime was just starting to touch American shores, and the Looney Tunes were ancient history. How has the world where Toons are real fared in the intervening forty years? What’s Toon Town like? How are the comedic Toons dealing with the influx of action-oriented fare, the advent of television?
It doesn’t even have to be that dark. In fact, it’d probably go best if you didn’t make it noir (the quintessential genre of the ’40s) and instead use a genre emblematic of the ’80s. Give me an ’80s buddy cop flick… but with toons. Heck, I’d take a The Breakfast Club but With Toons.
Make it something completely different from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Because that’s pretty much the only way you’re going to get anybody to go see it, since anybody who actually likes Roger Rabbit will probably know that a direct sequel is unnecessary, unlikely, and will only make them feel sad.
(via /Film.)
