Caffeinated Clint
Warner Bros may – and this sounds like an idea straight out of a Michael Tolkin book – sequelize “Casablanca”, The New York Post reports.
Cass Warner, the granddaughter of Warner Bros. co-founder Harry Warner, is said to be trying to convince Warner to bankroll her script “Return to Casablanca” (based on a treatment by “Casablanca” contributor Howard Koch, written 30 years ago). The studio passed on the project a year-and-a-half ago, but only because a big-name director wasn’t attached. Should young Warner be able to interest say, a Scorsese or a Nolan in the picture… then it’s likely she’ll get the go-ahead to make it, she tells the paper.
Warner came across Koch’s “Casablanca 2″ treatment amongst stacks of unproduced pieces when she was at his home in Woodstock.
In the treatment, Ilsa and Laszlo “attempted to locate Rick after he and Renault left to join the Free French forces opposing Rommel in North Africa. They have had no success. After leaving Casablanca for America, Ilsa learned she was pregnant,” Koch wrote. “She gave birth to a boy who grew up in America. The real father of the boy, it turns out, was not Laszlo but Rick. He was conceived the night Ilsa came to Rick’s place to plead for the Letters of Transit . . . The secret was not kept from Laszlo, but being the kind of man he was and owing so much to Rick, he adopted the child and treated him as his own son. The boy was named Richard, and he grew up to be a handsome, tough-tender young man reminiscent of his father. He had been told the truth about his origin and has a deep desire to find his real father, or at least more about him, since Rick’s heroic at actions in Casablanca have become legendary.”
The sequel would take place in 1961, as the 20-year-old Richard arrives in Casablanca after the death of his mother and Laszlo.
“Richard finds himself very much a stranger in the Arab world, a world now under Arab rule since the expulsion of the Germans and Vichy French who occupied Casablanca during the war,” Koch wrote.
I really don’t know about this… would you really want go go there!?
