‘Mamma Mia!’ sequel filmmaker Ol Parker teases potential for the film franchise
Released in 2018, ‘Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again’ hit theaters 10 years after the original film, which was itself based on the stage musical featuring ABBA tunes.
It reminds me of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again director Ol Parker might be willing to take a gamble on exploring another film in the musical franchise.
Parker, who oversaw Universal Pictures’ 2018 follow-up to filmmaker Phyllida Lloyd’s 2008 hit Mamma Mia!, told Screen Rant in an interview published online Saturday that producer Judy Craymer had always meant to do a film trilogy. Craymer has credits on both films as well as the ABBA-centric jukebox musical of the same name, which served as the inspiration for the first film and has been performed on the West End and Broadway.
“Judy Craymer, the genius producer behind the musical and the first two films, always plans for it to be a trilogy,” Parker teased. “That’s all I can say. The first one made an enormous amount of money, and I think we made a fair amount too.”
“I know there is a hunger for a third, and I know she has a plan,” the Ticket to Paradise director concluded. Wouldn’t it be lovely?”
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again brought back such castmembers from the first film as Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Dominic Cooper, and Christine Baranski, along with adding new players including Lily James and Cher.
Leslie Felperin, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, commented that the sequel’s choice of ABBA songs was less striking than the first: “Indeed, the movie’s biggest failing is that so much of its soundtrack, the very engine that propels it, is made up of far too many actual B-sides, or at least lesser-known tunes from the back catalog of Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, the two Swedish singer-songwriters who made up half of the 1970s pop quartet ABBA.”
Here We Go Again earned $395 million worldwide, far less than the $609 million earned by the 2008 film.