For a time I would check the status of both of these sequels every couple of weeks. I’ve neglected to do so now for a month or two, so here’s an update. Apologies if any of this is old news to you.

Scream 4 has been greenlit. Jurassic Park 4 however, is looking a wee bit extinct. The general consensus is that due to Michael Crichton’s death late last year, they think the film franchise should rest too. See here for details. Oh well. I loved the original and I appear to be the only person on the planet who liked the second film, but maybe 4 films would’ve been one too many.
Perhaps we’ll never know, or perhaps some clever doc’ll resurrect the prehistoric terrors again for another chompfest a few years down the line. We’ll juenst have to wait and see. One interesting and quite inspirational thing I did find while trawling through for updates on JP4 was that Wayne Knight – Dennis Nedry (the guy who basically destroyed Jurassic Park in the first film) has lost loads of weight. Even better is the fact that he did this naturally. Have a look here. Good on the fella!

Scream 4

According to imdb.com, Scream 4 is due next year. Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Dewey (David Arquette) are said to feature in the film, although it is not yet known how big a role they will each play. I enjoyed the first three films, though by the third outing it was all feeling a little stretched. They’d killed off Randy already in the second act and the scariness of the original (and not knowing who would survive) had been all but removed. Why then, do I want to see a sequel? well to be brutally honest, I’m not sure. I’d love to see them do something marvelous with the story – and/or dredge up the past in some exciting new way. How they would do this God only knows. I suppose I’m looking for nostalgia in all the wrong places and I should just watch the first film again. Who knows though? I’ll probably still want to see it whatever the weather if it features some of the old cast. Let’s just hope they don’t make one a year, the Saw franchise already has that covered.

If they are opting for a fresh protagonist I hope they don’t just give the old ones walk-on parts just to kill them off. That’d be ruthless, sure, but it’d mean (assuming the killer was unconnected with the original trilogy) that the fact those characters already survived three films means sod all. All new characters could mean it’d turn into a pile of cack ala the House of Wax remake (2005), where the cast
of dumb teenagers (actually actors in their late twenties, I shouldn’t wonder) pretend to act and then get killed in silly ways.

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