J.J. Abrams is only a few Hollywood franchises away from collecting them all, Pokémon-style, but apparently he missed his chance on a big one. Yes, while talking about how he first met Steven Spielberg on the Nerdist podcast (via Slashfilm), Abrams slipped in the news that he once worked on an outline for a Who Framed Roger Rabbit sequel, which could have made him the very best of Hollywood, like no one ever was. It did not happen:
Years later I got to meet Steven. I went into a meeting … actually, it was for a Roger Rabbit sequel. It was a whole thing. I actually have some storyboards for a Roger Rabbit short. Honestly, we never really got to that phase [where it got serious]. We were writing an outline, but it honestly went away before it was anything. This was a long time ago. Zemeckis probably would’ve been a producer on it. This was 1989.
Probably because of the deep shame he feels about not having the project move forward — and not because it happened so long ago — Abrams doesn’t remember many details about the working outline for Who Framed Roger Rabbit 2 (which could have been called 2 Framed Roger Rabbit, for all the world will know):
We were talking about the movie, but they had an idea for this short. I remember going to the animators — and I had never seen an animation pitch before — and they took me through it. There were three giant boards, and with a stick, they’d point to one of the storyboards and perform every frame. For someone who knows animation, you think, ‘Yeah, that’s what they do,’ but having never seen it before, it was unbelievably entertaining watching these two men perform, doing the voices.
Given Abrams’s newfound ability to fold pretty much whatever he wants into the Cloverfield universe, perhaps the next installment of that franchise could feature a guest appearance from Eddie Valient, or maybe even at trip to Toontown — What’s wrong with Toontown? Every Joe loves Toontown!
