'Demolition Man' Sequel In Development, According To Sylvester Stallone
It's been 27 years since the sci-fi action movie Demolition Man was released in theaters. And because nostalgia keeps injecting new life into old movies, it sounds like Sylvester Stallone will be back in action for a sequel. In a recent Q&A conducted through the actor's Instagram account, the aging action star revealed that a Demolition Man sequel is currently in development at Warner Bros. Pictures. Blast from the past!
If you're too young to remember Demolition Man, or maybe you just never saw it, here's the trailer:
Demolition Man begins in 1996 with a hostage situation gone wrong. A psychotic career criminal named Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) and his gang have taken hostages and are threatening to kill them. LAPD Sgt. John Spartan is trying to resolve the situation, thinks there aren't any hostages after conducting a thermal scan, and leads an unauthorized assault to apprehend Phoenix. Unfortunately, Phoenix blows up the building where the hostages were believed to be, and even though there was no evidence of them being there, corpses in the demolished building say otherwise.
Both Simon Phoenix and John Spartan are incarcerated in a new "California Cryo-Penitentiary", where they are cryogenically frozen and exposed to subliminal rehabilitation techniques. However, 26 years later, in the year 2032, Simon Phoenix escapes during a parole hearing, unleashing chaos in the futuristic city of San Angeles (a combination of San Diego, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles), which has eradicated all violent crime and is unequipped to deal with such a madman. In order to stop Phoenix, the police force decides to unfreeze John Spartan to deal with the situation.
As for what a sequel might entail, Sylvester Stallone didn't give any details, but he confirmed its hopeful existence:
"I think it is coming. We're working on it right now with Warner Brothers and it's looking fantastic, so that should come out. That's going to happen."
The movie has recently been discussed during the coronavirus pandemic because the futuristic society of the film has deemed physical contact to be illegal. But beyond that, I'm not sure there's any sort of interest in seeing a Demolition Man sequel. Furthermore, I'm not sure what you do to follow-up the original movie. The future depicted in that movie came from such a different time, and advancing it nearly 30 years would have to make for an even zanier future than the one depicted in the fictional 2032 imagined back in 1993.
Simon Phoenix was killed at the end of Demolition Man, so don't expect Wesley Snipes to come back, unless they introduce some kind of cloning element that allows him to return. Maybe Demolition Man will take a cue from other legacy-quels and introduce the idea that Simon Phoenix had a son or something like that. With such a high concept in the original movie, it's hard to know where a sequel will ultimately go. Will another fast food franchise besides Taco Bell take over the city? Hopefully we'll find out more sooner than later.