Monster Squad sequel idea scrapped for being too similar to It

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

I don't think there are many, if any, fans of director Fred Dekker's 1987 film THE MONSTER SQUAD who would pass on seeing a film about the squad members running into monsters again thirty years later simply because IT and IT: CHAPTER 2 also used the idea of children facing a monster and then having a rematch with that monster decades later… But it's because of the IT similarity that Dekker and his co-writer Shane Black aren't interested in doing a "thirty years later" sequel to THE MONSTER SQUAD. 

Speaking with moviefone, Dekker revealed that he has been discussing ways to follow up THE MONSTER SQUAD lately, but he's just not interested in pursuing the possibility because there are too many similar projects out there.

I'll be completely honest, Shane Black and I have both been approached about adapting “The Monster Squad” for television. Was it my first choice? No. But I'm a big fan now of long form television. I think “Breaking Bad” was a seminal viewing experience for me that I equated with “The Godfather.” I think it's the modern version of “The Godfather.” It just happens to be 62 hours long instead of, you know, two-and-a-half to three-hours long. So I'm a big fan of that. And figuring out a way to take “Monster Squad” and turn it into a long form series was very exciting to me. But when we were approached, it was right after “Stranger Things.” Hollywood has, as you must know, a monkey see, monkey do a business where, Oh, well that's successful, so let's just rip that off. So Shane and I had a meeting at Paramount. I said, “Let me just clarify — you guys want us to do a rip off of a rip off of us?” And they all sort of laughed. But that's basically what it came down to. 

And my other thought was on “The Monster Squad” was to show us the squad as they are now, because the fans that discovered the movie when they were very young, the age of the kids in the film, they may not have seen in the movie theater. They may have seen it on HBO or on video, but they grew up with it in the same way that the characters in that movie would have grown up. I thought, well, let's make this movie for the people who fell in love when they were kids and say, “Where is the squad as adults?” And Shane said to me, “Well that's it.” I said, “Yeah, it's a great idea.” And he goes, “No, that's Stephen King's ‘It.’ the first part of the book and the first movie is them as kids fighting monsters and the second movie is them as adults fighting monsters.” 

So as a fan of the genre, there is nothing to me remotely interesting or new about “Monster Squad” as a movie or a TV show. Maybe in 10 years, maybe in 15 years. But right now it's like, well everybody's already doing it.

I can understand walking away from the TV show if they were being pushed too hard to "make it like Stranger Things!", but I feel like the "thirty years later" sequel idea would be different enough from IT that it would still be worth doing.

Oh well. We'll see if anything happens in the next 10 to 15 years.