The director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit doesn’t think the cult classic could be made today.
Although a script has been completed for a sequel, Robert Zemeckis recently explained why the follow-up “isn’t ever going see the light of day, as good as it is,” more than 35 years after the original Disney/Amblin film premiered.
“There’s a good script [for a sequel] at Disney, but here’s the thing: The current Disney would never make Roger Rabbit today,” he said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “They can’t make a movie with Jessica in it.”
Zemeckis added, “I mean, look what they did to Jessica at the theme park. They trussed her up in a trench coat, you know.”
Who Framed Roger Rabbit stars Bob Hoskins as private eye Eddie Valiant, who is hired to find out if the titular cartoon star’s (voiced by Charles Fleischer) seductive wife Jessica Rabbit (Kathleen Turner) is cheating on him. When Toontown owner and Jessica’s alleged lover Marvin Acme (Stubby Kaye) ends up murdered, Roger is the prime suspect.
Roger Rabbit (voiced by Charles Fleischer), Bob Hoskins and Jessica Rabbit (Kathleen Turner) in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). (Buena Vista/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Zemeckis explained that he made the original 1988 movie, which combined live-action and animation, at a time when Disney was “ready to rebuild itself,” adding: “We were there when that new regime came in, and they were full of energy, and they wanted to do it. I kept saying, and I sincerely say this, I do believe this, ‘I’m making Roger Rabbit the way I believe Walt Disney would have made it.’ The reason I say that is because Walt Disney never made any of his movies for children. He always made them for adults. And that’s what I decided to do with Roger Rabbit.”
With a “magnificent” script from OG scribes Peter S. Seamen and Jeffrey Price, Zemeckis told The Telegraph in 2016 the film is “more a continuation than a sequel,” which would see Roger and Jessica “into the next few years of period film, moving on from film noir to the world of the 1950s.”
Zemeckis also planned to include a digital ghost of Hoskins’ Eddie after the actor died at age 71 in 2014.