Talk about a sequel for “Rounders” seems to have been around forever, and while movement hasn’t really happened at all on a followup to the 1998 film, the prospect of one is still very real. The last time we heard about the possibility of a sequel was late last year when the Weinsteins made a deal with the new owners of their old label, Miramax, to help develop new movies based on a big portion of their back catalog (other films mentioned included “Shakespeare in Love,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Copland,” “From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Swingers,” “Clerks,” “Shall We Dance” and “The Amityville Horror”). And really, we didn’t expect to hear anything else but Harvey Weinstein has tossed it back in the ring.
Variety reveals that at the recent Produced By conference Harvey said that the film’s success on DVD and TV has propelled his plans to get a sequel made. “I never make sequels but it’s something I’d like to revisit,” he said, conveniently forgetting that Dimension Films does almost nothing but sequels.
Yet, despite Harvey’s enthusiasm, realistically speaking, a “Rounders 2” is a long way off. Writer Brian Koppelman, who penned the script for the original with David Levien, told us last year, “We’ve talked a lot about doing ‘Rounders 2’ when we were making ‘Ocean’s 13’ and we were working with Matt [Damon] again. We talked about it a lot and Edward [Norton] came by and we had meetings and we called John Dahl, and he’s in to do the sequel. It’s just a question of when we’re going to do it, when we have the exact angle in.”
And considering Matt Damon has “Elysium” and “Liberace” on his calendar, and with Koppelman and Levien writing “National Treasure 3” and trying to get their next feature “City Of The Sun” off the ground, it doesn’t look like it will happen anytime soon. Anyway, it’s likely just one toy in a big box of movies that Harvey — for better or worse — is going to dust off and refresh.
