Editorial Staff
Speaking to Good Morning America about the legacy of “Coming to America” celebrating it’s 30th anniversary this week, writers David Sheffield and Barry Blaustein touched on the upcoming sequel – which will reportedly see Prince Akeem heading to America to find his long lost son.
“Eddie [Murphy] called us and said, ‘We’re going to do a sequel. We have a notion and an idea,'” he recalled.
“It began with the notion that Eddie’s character Prince Akeem] has to find his son, who can become the king because the country has this tradition that the eldest male [will take the throne],” Sheffield continued. “So it’s Eddie pursuing his long lost son, who’s an American. That was the basis of it. That was the beginning.”
The film, which will be directed by Jonathan Levine (“Snatched”, “Warm Bodies”), is one both screenwriters resisted doing for decades.
“We had resisted doing a sequel for a long time because we thought it was pretty much a ‘fade to complete,'” Sheffield said. “We thought it was self-contained… Hakeem’s story was complete. He met the woman of his dreams and we didn’t want to mess with that.”
“We’re friends and usually with Eddie it starts with a phone call,” Sheffield said. “[He asks,] ‘Hey want to write this?’ And we say, ‘Great!'”
The duo didn’t say much more than that, but they did confirm that John Amos will be back as Cleo McDowell, the kindly owner of McDonald’s rip-off restaurant McDowells.
“John Amos is in our version,” Blaustein teased. “He’s in Zamunda and he opened up a McDowells.”
