Director Mick Garris's film SLEEPWALKERS was kind of a big deal when it was coming out in 1992, because the marketing was able to play up the fact that this was the first thing literary master of horror Stephen King had written specifically for the screen. This wasn't based on one of his novels or short stories, he had only written it as a screenplay. The movie did well enough at the box office, but the reaction to it was so mixed that a couple decades later it was even featured as a "Black Sheep" in our video series about films that deserve more positive attention.
Starring Brian Krause, Madchen Amick, and Alice Krige, SLEEPWALKERS is a
terrifying tale of modern-day vampires who prey on virtuous young women. Madchen Amick is the sexually curious virgin who falls for the new boy in school (Krause), only to learn too late that he's a life-sucking Sleepwalker. Mutating at will from golden boy to savage monster, Krause stalks Amick to feed his seductive mother. As the tension mounts (and the casualties pile up), the town's tabbies gather for a final, chilling showdown with the monsters in their midst – and we all know it's not nice to hurt people's felines.
I've never been very fond of the movie myself, so I've never found myself pondering the potential of a sequel… until now. After listening to the most recent episode of Garris's podcast Post Mortem, I'm wishing a sequel had been made back in the mid-'90s.
This podcast episode is a short Q&A session with filmmaker Joe Russo, producer of Garris's recent anthology project NIGHTMARE CINEMA, reading questions that were sent in by listeners. When Russo read a question asking if there was ever talk of making a SLEEPWALKERS 2, Garris answered,
There was a little bit of talk. I mean, the movie was successful, it was the #1 movie the week that it came out. I never heard the studio talk about it, but Tabitha King, Stephen King's wife, actually wrote a treatment for a sequel to SLEEPWALKERS that involved a women's basketball team somehow. I'm not sure how, I never read it, but King was very excited that Tabby came up with this. But it was a sequel that nobody at the studio gave a shit about. You know, they liked the money that SLEEPWALKERS made, but it was not a prestige release by any means, so they never even thought about SLEEPWALKERS after."
Garris and Russo then discussed the possibility of a reboot:
GARRIS: I'm surprised there hasn't been a quest to reboot it, in these days of rebooting everything, no matter what the quality or success level.
RUSSO: We had a very flirtatious conversation with a production company about a year ago, maybe. It was nothing more than flirting.
GARRIS: Flirting with disaster.
I'm not very interested in the idea of a reboot, but I am curious to hear further details on the SLEEPWALKERS 2 treatment Tabitha King wrote. The idea of a "life-sucking Sleepwalker" going after a women's basketball team sounds like a fun set-up to me.