Goonies never say die. Corey Feldman has divulged that he and his co-star Sean Astin came up with a pitch for a sequel to their 1985 classic ‘The Goonies’, but it was rejected. While attending a special screening of ‘Serengeti’, “Mouth” told Us Weekly:
“Sean Astin and I actually wrote a pitch, a treatment of about 10 pages that we took into [director] Richard Donner and a representative of [screenwriter] Chris Columbus and Steven [Spielberg]. We pitched it and Donner loved it, but he said it was too expensive an idea.”
There has been talk about a sequel to ‘The Goonies’ going all the way back to when the first film was released, but nothing has ever materialized. This chatter amplified in 2007, after the first film was released on DVD and included a reunion of the original cast– Feldman, Astin, Josh Brolin (Brand), Jeff Cohen (Chunk), Kerri Green (Andi), Martha Plimpton (Steff), and Jonathan Ke Huy Quan (Data)– and proved to be a huge seller. In the 2010 DVD release, ‘The Making of a Cult Classic: The Unauthorized Story of The Goonies’, Donner stated that a sequel was “definitely” happening. As recently as 2014, Donner stated that a sequel was in the works and that the original cast would return.
In other media, a ‘Goonies’ animated series was in the works at Cartoon Network, which would have included some of the cast, including Feldman, as grown-up versions of their characters, with new kids going on adventures. This was around 2007, but the project never came to fruition. In 2015, Donner stated that ‘The Goonies’ would become a form of immersive off-Broadway theatrical experience. That also never came to pass, nor has a long-discussed Broadway musical version. But that would presumably adapt the original movie, not act as a sequel.
At this point, is no news good news? Is it best to just let this ’80s classic age gracefully without a sequel that may not live up to the original?
