Guy Pearce comments on scrapped L.A. Confidential sequel

Based on James Ellroy’s novel, Curtis Hanson’s neo-noir thriller L.A. Confidential blended corruption and Hollywood in the 1950s as three LAPD officers investigated a series of murders. The film was a major success and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It also helped to launch the careers of Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, who were relatively unknown at the time. In recent years, there were rumours of a possible L.A. Confidential sequel, but the project obviously didn’t move forward.

While speaking with Games Radar, Guy Pearce spoke about the L.A. Confidential sequel, which was rumoured to reunite the actor with Russell Crowe and also feature Chadwick Boseman.

We started having discussions with [L.A. Confidential director and co-writer] Curtis Hanson and with James Ellroy some years ago now about whether we could do some sort of follow-up. In the trilogy of books, that story is followed up. There was talk about whether we’d create something new, basically ten years on. 1963. It never went anywhere. It was just proving to be too expensive or too difficult.

Guy Pearce continued, “I’m not sure what the Chadwick Boseman connection was. His name was never brought up to me at the time. But there were some rumblings in the camp which went away. It’s unfortunate. I was excited at the prospect that we could revisit these characters one day.” As both Curtis Hanson and Chadwick Boseman are no longer with us, that’s another reason why the L.A. Confidential sequel was ultimately scrapped. In addition to tossing the big screen sequel in the bin, there was also an L.A. Confidential TV series that was scrapped. The series would have starred Walton Goggins, Shea Whigham, Sarah Jones, Brian J. Smith, and Mark Weber, but CBS later decided not to move forward with the pilot.