The potential follow-up to director Jim Henson’s 1980s fantasy classic Labyrinth has taken another step forward in its march through development.
Speaking with Fandango, attached director Fede Alvarez revealed that the screenplay has been written and that he recently met with Henson’s daughter Lisa, who is serving as a co-producer on the project.
We’re very excited about it. It is basically a direct continuation of the first movie many years later, and I can’t tell you much more about it… But we have a script, and we’re very excited about it so we’ll see where that goes. Like always, it takes time and effort to put those movies together because they’re larger than life. But that’s one of the projects that I’m very excited about.
While Alvarez is very short on details, his comment does confirm what screenwriter Nicole Perlman stated two years ago after the project was first announced that the film would be a continuation of the story and not a remake. Since then, Alvarez and Jay Basu have done further drafts on the script.
But what form will this follow-up take? We do know that David Bowie’s iconic Jareth, the Goblin King, won’t be making an appearance in the film. Speculation is that the story could focus on Toby, the infant kidnapped by the Goblin King whom Jennifer Connelly’s character Sarah has to rescue in the first film. Would that mean a return of Connelly as well?
Whatever the answers are, we probably won’t know anytime soon. Alvarez is currently concentrating on getting his latest film, The Girl in the Spider’s Web out the door for its November 9 release.
