In fact, there’s actually dozens – dozens upon dozens.
From mainstream hits -Toy Story 3 arrived over a decade after Toy Story 2 – to little seen straight-to-DVD follow ups – hello Kindergarten Cop 2, which dropped 26 years after the original – long-awaited sequels have become somewhat of a hot topic in pop culture folklore.
Tron: Legacy (29 years)
Disney’s Tron redefined the game in terms of technical brilliance and cinematic breakthroughs when it debuted in 1982. There had always been talk of a follow up, but it took nearly 30 years for that to happen with Tron: Legacy. Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner both returned for the sequel which followed the plight of Flynn’s son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) as he struggled to unravel the mystery of his dad’s disappearance. Visually striking and far exceeding many people’s expectations, it did well enough to spawn a spin-off animated series and a video game.
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Mad Max: Fury Road (29 years)
When we look at the film history books, this will be mentioned in the same breath as Aliens, Terminator 2 and other films James Cameron didn’t direct as one of the great movie sequels of all time. George Miller’s follow-up to Beyond Thunderdome in 1985 nearly got up off the ground several times and in several different countries before he was finally able to spend a year in the dessert shooting this groundbreaking, jaw-dropping, Oscar-winning Apocalyptic classic which debuted in 2015.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (22 years)
There’s a general rule of thumb with sequels: if you don’t have anything new to say, then don’t say it. Oliver Stone obviously didn’t listen to that mantra when he returned to the woes of Gordon Gekko in 2010 for this Wall Street sequel. Lacking the bite of the 1987 original, which is strange considering it followed the Global Financial Crisis, this is perhaps one that should have been left as is.
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T2 Trainspotting (20 years)
British filmmaker Danny Boyle had been hustling along in the film industry directing and producing television for close to a decade before he hit in a big way with Trainspotting in 1996. Now, some 20 years and one Oscar later, he got the cast back together for T2 Trainspotting. The first sequel Boyle has ever made, he said it was a huge risk returning to a story people loved so much the first time but something that felt necessary in order to examine that transition from boyhood to manhood.
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Blues Brothers 2000 (17 years)
The 1980 Blues Brothers film is considered one of cinema’s greats: and for good reason. Picking up where it left off – and overcoming the hurdle of John Belushi’s death – was no easy feat, yet with the original filmmaker John Landis returning along with Dan Aykroyd in 1998 it seemed like a no-brainer. Unfortunately audiences didn’t agree, with critics blasting the film and it struggling to make more than $15M at the box-office.
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Zoolander 2 (15 years)
Ben Stiller’s ode to the ridiculous nature of pop culture in 2001 became quickly ingrained in the mainstream with phrases like ‘blue steel’ and ‘really, really ridiculously good looking'. It took 15 years for Zoolander 2 to arrive in 2016 which was largely due the tragedy surrounding the death of comedian Drake Sather, who took his life in 2004 and who Stiller said it felt difficult to move forward on the second film without.
