It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to the next picture show, a movie the week podcast devoted to a classic film and the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Tasha Robinson, here again with Genevieve Kosky, Scott Tobias, and Keith Phipps.

On last week's episode, we talked about Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Robert Zemeckis' groundbreaking hybrid live action and animation feature.

Roger Robert was a smash success in 1988. It made more than $300 million internationally,

and in America, it was the year's top earner, easily dominating films like Coming to America,

big, die hard, and Beetlejuice. And yet, in an industry that usually leaps to copycat any success,

there's never been a sequel, and there have hardly even been attempts at the same kind of

hybrid-world genre. Leaving aside the occasional flop like Ralph Bakshi's Cool World in 1992,

the cinematic co-tailed writers of the world have been shockingly lax on trying to churn out

another Roger Rabbit. Disney itself

played around with some sequel ideas that came to nothing, and experimented with a new

CG version of the Roger Rabbit character in trials that proved so dispiriting that the company

shelved the project entirely. These days, in 2022, CG characters in live action films are common

enough that it doesn't seem like there would be any technological barrier to making an updated Roger Rabbit.

But Bob Hoskins always said he didn't think a sequel would work, and not long after 1988,

he began pointing out that he just didn't have the physicality for the role anymore.

His death in 2014 guaranteed that a full reunion would never be possible.

Robert Zemeckis has made it clear that he's moved on

and is not interested in making a sequel for the CGA age,

...