Bah! Humbug! Hollywood planning unnecessary sequel to 67 year-old Christmas classic…
Star Partners and Hummingbird Productions have announced plan to team for a sequel to Frank Capra’s 1946 bittersweet Christmas classic ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’
Based on Philip Van Doren Stern’s short story ‘The Greatest Gift,’ the iconic original starred James Stewart as George Bailey, a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman who has given up his dreams in order to help others and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his eternally bumbling guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (played by Henry Travers).
According to Variety, the sequel, titled ‘It’s A Wonderful Life: The Rest of the Story,’ sees an angel showing to show Bailey’s unlikeable grandson (also named George Bailey) all the lives he has touched and how different the world would have been had he never been born. Karolyn Grimes, who played Bailey’s daughter Zuzu in the original, is set to play the angel.
Bob Farnsworth of Hummingbird and Allen J. Schwalb of Star Partners will produce the feature, which is aiming for a Christmas 2014 release. Farnsworth and Martha Bolton are behind the script.