Whenever the cast of The Goonies is reunited, talk always turns to a sequel, and generally the consensus is that Goonies 2 is unlikely. Writer Chris Columbus has spoken about a possible next-generation torch-passing exercise, and there was a mooted animated series a while back, but the rest is silence.
Gathered together at a press junket for The Goonies' 25th Anniversary DVD and Blu-ray release, all involved have once again reiterated that, while Goonies never say die, they're prepared to say "probably not". "I don't think it's ever going to happen," says Jonathan Ke Quan (Data). "Five years ago there was a magnificent script... but we're all getting too old," says Corey Feldman (Mouth). "It felt like everything we were doing would hurt the original," says Richard Donner (director).
So is there any other way to return to the Goonies well? Like, for example, staging it as a Broadway musical? Course there is. "It's been taking forever," reveals Donner, "but that long process just got a lot shorter. There's a great writer / producer called Tim Long who does musicals on The Simpsons* which are classic. He just delivered a treatment of The Goonies as a musical, and it's friggin' great!"
So, a set-piece Busby Berkeley number based around the Truffle Shuffle? A tender operatic moment between Jake Fratelli and Chunk? If this takes The Producers' route of film-to-stage-musical-to-musical-film, maybe we could see The Goonies on screen again after all...
The anniversary set is out in the US on November 2.
*Though sadly not Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off.