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The script for the sequel to Forrest Gump was completed on September 10th 2001.
One of the defining movies of the golden 1990s decade of cinema came extremely close to getting a sequel, it’s been revealed.
Released in 1994, Forrest Gump was a monumental success, earning a handful of Academy Awards, including a Best Actor gong for Tom Hanks, as well as capturing the hearts of almost everyone who watched it.
The film was based on a novel by Winston Groom, and in 1995 Groom penned a second Gump novel, meaning there was substantial grounds for a second Gump film.
Screenwriter from the original Eric Roth was tasked with writing the script for the sequel.
The day he handed in the completed product? September 10, 2001.
“Literally, I turned it in the day before 9/11,” Roth told Yahoo Entertainment.
“And Tom (Hanks) and I and Bob (Zemeckis) got together on 9/11 to sort of commiserate about how life was in America and how tragic it was. And we looked at each other and said, ‘This movie has no meaning anymore, in that sense’.”
And that was it for the Forrest Gump sequel.
But what would’ve happened if the movie had been made?
The sequel would’ve been called Gump and Co. and would pick up Forrest’s life in the 1980s.
Initially things would take a sad turn for Gump’s own son, played in the original film by a young Haley Joel Osment.
“It was gonna start with his little boy having AIDS,” Roth told Yahoo, explaining that the film would’ve examined the brutal HIV/AIDS stigma of the 1980s, with the young boy facing discrimination at school because of his disease.
Much like the original, Forrest would have unwittingly made an appearance in some iconic moments from history.
With Ruth explaining how he would’ve ended up in the back of O.J. Simpson’s Bronco during the sports star’s 1994 televised police car chase after the murder of his ex-wife.
“He would look up occasionally, but they didn’t see him in the rearview mirror, and then he’d pop down,” said Roth.
Gump would also become a ballroom dancer, dancing with Princess Diana before her 1997 death.
Another real-life event woven into the script: The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, a terrorist attack that killed 168 people.
Given the tragic events that occurred just one day after Roth turned in his script in, the sequel was put on ice — permanently. “Everything felt meaningless,” he recalled of life immediately after 9/11.
What could’ve been!
