13 Sequels That Took Forever to Finally Come Out

These 13 sequels came out a decade — or five — after the originals.

We aren't including straight-to-video cash-ins or films promoted as sequels that don't involve any of the original creative team from the first movie. So we are not including, for example, 2012's Easy Rider 2: The Ride Home, which didn't bring back the cast or production team from 1969's Easy Rider.

So with that, are 13 sequels that took forever to come out, and how many years we mean by "forever."

Avatar: The Way of Water: 13 Years

James Cameron's 2009's Avatar is the most successful movie of all time, raking in nearly $3 billion. But still, some people wondered, as they waited more than a decade for its sequel: Did the world want more Avatar?

The answer was absolutely yes. The 2022 Avatar: The Way of Water has earned more than $2.3 billion, and earned the third-highest grosses of any movie. (Avengers: Endgame is No. 2.)

Clearly the time Cameron spend nailing down his story and perfecting all those computer-generated images was worth it. Cameron plans several more films in the series.

The Incredibles 2: 14 Years

Most kids old enough to see 2004's The Incredibles in a theater were adults by the time Pixar got around to making 2018's The Incredibles 2, the follow-up to the original superhero smash.

You know what? The Incredibles 2 was totally worth the wait. It built on the themes of the first Incredibles, expanded the world, showed us the kids growing up, and delved deeper into Bob and Helen's marital dynamics. Also, animation this beautiful takes a long time to painstakingly create.

We get it.

The Two Jakes: 16 years

The 1990 sequel The Two Jakes did its best to hold together the creative team behind 1974's Chinatown, one of the most respected movies of all time. It was written by Robert Towne, the brilliant Chinatown screenwriter who died earlier this month, and again starred Jack Nicholson as private investigator Jake Gittes. Other returning cast included Joe Mantell, Perry Lopez, James Hong, and, briefly, Faye Dunaway. Robert Evans once again produced.

Original Chinatown director Roman Polanski couldn't direct — not in America, anyway — because he had fled the country to avoid sentencing on a charge of unlawful sex with a minor. So at one point Towne was expected to direct, and eventually Nicholson took the helm. The film got mixed reviews and failed to impress at the box office.

Was the directing the problem? We don't think so. Sam Wasson's excellent 2020 book The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood details how close the original Chinatown came to falling apart — Towne had serious trouble with the script before ultimately writing one of the all-time great screenplays. It's hard to imagine lightning striking again, 16 years after the success of the first Chinatown.

Before his death, Towne was working with David Fincher on a Chinatown prequel series.

Gladiator II: 24 Years

Ridley Scott's sequel to his Oscar winner for Best Picture, Gladiator, picks up a generation after the original — in real time, and movie time.

It brings back one of the sole survivors of the original, Connie Nielsen's Lucilla, and it turns out her son from the first movie (spoiler alert) was also the son of Crowe's character, Maximus. The boy, Lucius, is now a man played by Paul Mescal.

Add to the mix a bad guy named Macrinus, played by Denzel Washington, a great new general named Acacius (Pedro Pascal), and some CGI rhinos and sharks.

The Color of Money: 25 years

Many people don't even realize that 1986's The Color of Money is a direct sequel to 1961'sThe Hustler, with Paul Newman reprising his role as "Fast Eddie" Felson, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He had previously been nominated for playing the same role in The Hustler.

Martin Scorsese directed the film, which was widely considered inferior to The Hustler at the time of its release, but has aged quite nicely. And it's fascinating to see Tom Cruise act against one of the greatest movie stars of all time, on the way to becoming another.

Both The Hustler and The Color of Money are based on the novels of the same names by Walter Tevis.

Tron Legacy: 28 years

There was a terrific Simpsons joke in 1995 in which almost no one in the cast has seen (or will admit seeing) 1982's Tron.

But the movie, a moderate box office success in the early '80s, when arcade games were red hot, had enough of a following to spawn a sequel, 2010's Tron Legacy directed by Joseph Kosinski that brought back Tron stars Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, as well as original Tron writer-director Steven Lisberger, this time as a producer.

The new Tron paid homage to the original while spinning its story fascinatingly forward, and looked arguably even cooler than the first. It also proved that Kosinski was stunningly adept at bringing 1980s film into the modern era, as we'll see in the next slide... and then see again.

Twisters: 28 years

The new Twisters is a standalone sequel with the same general subject matter — twisters — as the original 1996 Twister. Joseph Kosinski, who you may remember from the previous slide, came up with the story and was scheduled to direct before Lee Isaac Chung took the reins.

Though Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton starred in the first Twister, this one stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos as storm chasers — some of whom are more cautious than others.

Independence Day: Resurgence: 30 years

Was it worth the three-decade wait for a sequel to 1996's Independence Day that didn't bring back Will Smith as its star?

Even though 2016's Independence Day: Resurgence brought back Roland Emmerich, director of the original, and his co-writer, Dean Devlin, as well as stars Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman, it proved to be a critical and box office disappointment with $389.7 million worldwide.

How is that disappointing? Because the budget was around $165 million.

Coming 2 America: 33 years

Maybe one reason Eddie Murphy knew he could pull off this past summer's Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, three decades after Beverly Hills Cop III, is that he had already made another sequel with an even longer break between films:

2021's Coming 2 America brings back many of the stars of 1988's Coming to America, including of course Murphy as the beloved Prince (now King) Akeem.

Though most critics and audiences didn't feel it measured up to the original (what does?), it provided much needed laughter during the pandemic when it was released on Amazon Prime Video.

Blade Runner 2049: 35 years

The original 1982 Blade Runner, set in 2019, is a sci-fi classic that felt like a closed story, impossible to improve upon. But for 2017's Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve dared to take over from original Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, and did the original film justice in this sequel that featured K (Ryan Gosling) hunting down replicants and running eventually into the hero of the original film, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford).

Ana de Armas, in one of her breakout roles, added an element of mystery and sadness as K's A.I. hologram girlfriend, Joi.

Blade Runner 2049 was a box office letdown, but feels like a building block to Villeneuve's incredibly ambitious Dune films. It also spawned a TV series, Blade Runner: Black Lotus.

Top Gun: Maverick: 36 years

Joseph Kosinski's mastery of revisiting older material is most apparent with 2022's Top Gun: Maverick, which he directed. It brought back 1986's Top Gun star Tom Cruise as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, and has proven to be, so far, the biggest hit of Cruise's long career.

Earning nearly $1.5 billion worldwide, it was the second-highest-grossing film of 2022, behind Avatar: The Way of Water, and deserves much of the credit for bringing audiences back to theaters after the long pandemic shutdowns. (Avatar: The Way of Water was released a mere 13 years after the original Avatar.)

Did Tom Cruise save movies? You could make that case. And a new Top Gun is in the works.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: 36 Years

Say this for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: Everyone has aged very well since the 1988 original of half of the same name. And Michael Keaton didn't even have to worry about aging, given that his character is, well, dead.

In addition to returning Beetlejuice stars Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara, the sequel includes new additions Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Jenna Ortega, and Willem Dafoe in a new story of the Deetz family.

Audiences found it very much worth the wait: The Tim Burton comedy has earned more than $450 million on a $100 million budget.

Mary Poppins Returns: 54 Years

The live-action record for the longest break between an original movie and the movie sequel goes to 1964's Mary Poppins and 2018's Mary Poppins Returns.

We know this Emily Blunt-led charmer is almost more of a reboot than a sequel, and didn't include most of the original team, many of whom were no longer with us. But we're counting it because the storyline directly continued that of Mary Poppins, the sequel brought back Dick Van Dyke from the original, and both were based on the works of author P. L. Travers.

We could have included a lot of other Disney films on this list — 101 Dalmations, Lady and the Tramp and others all had straight to video sequels. But again, we're only counting theatrical releases.

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