Having anointed himself as ‘Franchise Viagra’ a decade ago, it was inevitable that everything Dwayne Johnson touches would be designed with sequel potential in mind, regardless of whether or not they end up materializing.
For the most part, the actor and producer has a solid track record of success when it comes to either joining or building multi-film properties, but San Andreas marks one of the rare occasions where a sequel was announced, only to remain trapped in the throes of development hell ever since.
That’s a little strange when you remember the disaster epic is Johnson’s highest-grossing film ever that isn’t part of the Fast & Furious or Jumanji brands, but up until very recently we hadn’t heard a peep out of San Andreas Part II since it was first announced in February 2016.
However, after The Rock revealed he had a great idea for the story, producer Hiram Garcia followed suit in an interview with ScreenRant by revealing that the project isn’t quite dead yet.
“We actually have ideas. We’re working on something there on how we can continue that story. So, look, disaster movies are so much fun, and that was such a great concept. Our friend, Beau Flynn, had come up with the idea of being like, ‘You know what? You love disaster movies. And I would love the idea to do something based around a giant earthquake in the San Andreas fault’.
So New Line and Warners have always wanted a sequel to that. So we’ve been working hard to figure out how we could crack something in that space. But we’d love to be able to continue telling the story in that world. And I agree with you, there’s something to just the big cataclysmic… I feel like Roland Emmerich is the master of that. He’s, that is no one wants to destroy the world more but we’d like to try and take a couple little pieces of it and see what we can blow up as well.”
Somebody should probably tell co-star Alexandra Daddario, then, after she resigned herself to the fact more San Andreas was a highly unlikely proposition. The only real issue is finding time on Johnson’s dance card to make it, with the self-proclaimed ‘hardest worker in the room’ fully booked for the next few years as usual.