In an age when brand recognition is key to a franchise’s success, studios don’t seem too interested in “spiritual sequels,” but it can be a great way for a director to add to a statement they made years earlier or expand on a story they don’t have the rights to.
Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! is a spiritual sequel to another coming-of-age hangout movie named after a beloved rock track from the era in which it’s set. Where Dazed and Confused revolves around high school kids on the last day of school in the 1970s, Everybody Wants Some!! revolves around college kids starting school in 1980.
Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)
1993’s Dazed and Confused is one of the most acclaimed comedies of all time and the movie that put Richard Linklater on the map. After capturing the lives of high schoolers in the ‘70s in Dazed and Confused, Linklater returned to capture the lives of college students in the ‘80s in its belated spiritual sequel Everybody Wants Some!!, released in 2016.
Linklater also considered it to be a spiritual successor to his previous movie Boyhood in some regard, because Boyhood ended with Mason leaving for college and Everybody Wants Some!! is about a group of young men starting college.
Soldier (1998)
1998’s Soldier is an underrated sci-fi action gem. David Peoples wrote the movie as an unofficial sequel to Blade Runner, which he’d co-penned with Hampton Fancher based on Philip K. Dick’s story.
While it has no canonical connection to Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking neo-noir masterpiece, Soldier is considered to take place in its shared fictional universe. Kurt Russell’s character is suggested to be a veteran of the wars mentioned in Roy Batty’s final “tears in rain” monologue.
This Is 40 (2012)
Technically, Judd Apatow’s This is 40 is a literal sequel to Knocked Up. Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, and Maude and Iris Apatow all reprise their roles as the nuclear family contrasted with Ben and Alison’s unexpected pregnancy in Knocked Up. But This is 40 stands alone as a movie about a married couple going through a midlife crisis.
The poster tagline described it as a “sort-of sequel” to Knocked Up. It has the same James L. Brooks-adjacent balance of situational comedy and emotional drama.
Mallrats (1995)
Kevin Smith’s directorial debut Clerks takes place on a single day and sees two best friends discussing pop culture and their dating woes throughout a mundane day in New Jersey. After Clerks became a surprise hit at Sundance, Smith essentially repeated the same formula for his second feature, Mallrats. This time, instead of discussing pop culture and their dating woes at work, the two buddies discuss it at a mall.
There’s a lot more slapstick humor in Mallrats, but it feels very much like a spiritual successor to Clerks. Clerks did eventually get an official sequel, Clerks II, which was surprisingly satisfying. An aging Dante and Randal, now working at a fast-food restaurant, reflect on how their lives have turned out.
Interstellar (2014)
While Christopher Nolan ended up bringing Interstellar to the screen, it was actually the brainchild of producer Lynda Obst and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who initially developed the project for Steven Spielberg. Obst and Thorne had previously collaborated on 1997’s , another sci-fi film based on real science starring Matthew McConaughey.
Interestingly, the inclusion of Matt Damon as a cameoing astronaut who got left behind ended up making 2015’s The Martian feel like a spiritual successor to Interstellar.
Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby (2006)
Adam McKay and Will Ferrell left their SNL roots behind and translated their peculiar brand of absurdist comedy to the big screen with Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, the story of an overconfident celebrity whose reign over his particular industry is threatened by a newcomer. Then, they did the same thing with Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.
Ricky Bobby is essentially Ron Burgundy if he was born in North Carolina and became a NASCAR driver instead of anchoring the news in San Diego. Rather than a female co-anchor challenging the patriarchy, Ricky’s rival is a French F1 driver who challenges his xenophobia.
Foxy Brown (1974)
In 1973 and 1974, Jack Hill and Pam Grier delivered a double whammy of groundbreaking blaxploitation movies that defined the genre: Coffy and Foxy Brown. They’re both hard-hitting revenge thrillers starring the legendary Grier as a strong, empowered woman on a crusade of vengeance.
Originally, Foxy Brown was intended to be a straight successor to Coffy. It was produced under the title Burn, Coffy, Burn, but the producers changed it to an original title at the last minute. It still makes a great companion piece to Coffy.
For A Few Dollars More (1965)
In Sergio Leone’s groundbreaking spaghetti westerns A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Clint Eastwood plays a bounty hunter drifting from town to town in a bleak depiction of the Old West, identified as “The Man with No Name,” and a couple of different nicknames along the way.
After A Fistful of Dollars was essentially a shot-for-shot remake of Yojimbo in Leone’s blood-drenched Wild West, For a Few Dollars More paired him up with a fellow bounty hunter with a very different personality, played by Lee Van Cleef.
Casino (1995)
As a stylized, fast-paced gangster epic with extensive voiceover narration starring Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci as hothead mafiosos, Casino was instantly compared to Martin Scorsese’s earlier hit Goodfellas upon release.
While Casino mostly tells its own story about a different criminal in a different line of organized crime in a different part of America, it does have a few direct parallels with Goodfellas beyond the involvement of screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi. For example, in Goodfellas, Pesci’s character kills Frank Vincent’s character; in Casino, Vincent’s character kills Pesci’s character.
Hot Fuzz (2007)
While Hot Fuzz has no story connection to Edgar Wright’s previous movie Shaun of the Dead (and even features a DVD of it on-screen), it is another genre spoof starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost alongside a bunch of old co-stars from Spaced and a few Cornetto ice cream cones.
Wright, Pegg, and Frost reteamed six years later to complete the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy with The World’s End, a sci-fi comedy about a bunch of friends whose hometown pub crawl is interrupted by an alien invasion.
