‘American Werewolf in London’ Almost Got a Sequel in 1991

The 1981 horror film An American Werewolf in London is often regarded as one of the best werewolf movies of all time, which got the sequel An American Werewolf in Paris, whose reliance on CGI came as a disappointment to fans. What could possibly make the sequel even more disappointing is that the film’s original director, John Landis, recently confirmed he attempted to make a sequel to his film in the early ’90s.

“I was asked to do a sequel by PolyGram in 1991,” Landis explained in the book Beware the Moon: The Story of An American Werewolf in London. “The company, under Jon Peters and Peter Guber, made something like 10 or 12 movies, and the only one that made money was American Werewolf. They then left the company and were replaced by a guy called Michael Kuhn. He called me and said that they were interested in making a sequel. I entertained the idea for a little bit and then came up with something that I liked and wrote a first draft of the script.”

In the original film, two backpackers are making their way through a rural part of England when they encounter a werewolf. While one of the Americans dies, the other survives and must deal with the curse of being a werewolf. The filmmaker went on to describe what would happen in his proposed sequel.

“The movie was about the girl that the boys talk about at the beginning of the movie, Debbie Klein. She gets a job in London as a literary agent and while she’s there, starts privately investigating the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Jack and David,” Landis recalled. “The conceit was that during the time in the first film where Jenny goes to work and David is pacing around the apartment, he actually wrote Debbie Klein a letter. It was all to do with this big secret that David had never told Jack that he had a thing with her.”

Landis added, “She tracks down Dr. Hirsch, who tells her that Alex now lives in Paris because she was so traumatized by what happened. She went back to the Slaughtered Lamb and everyone is still there! I think the only changes were a portrait of Charles and Diana where the five-pointed star used to be and darts arcade game instead of a board.”

The proposed film would also answer a big mystery from the original, revealing that the nurse Alex, who cared for David after the attack, was the werewolf that attacked the duo.

While there are currently no plans for a sequel, the filmmaker’s son Max Landis is currently developing a reboot of his father’s film.

[H/T Digital Spy]