phantom limb /ˈfan(t)əm’lim/ n. an often painful sensation of the presence of a limb that has been amputated.

Welcome to Phantom Limbs, a recurring feature which will take a look at intended yet unproduced horror sequels and remakes – extensions to genre films we love, appendages to horror franchises that we adore – that were sadly lopped off before making it beyond the planning stages. Here, we will be chatting with the creators of these unmade extremities to gain their unique insight into these follow-ups that never were, with the discussions standing as hopefully illuminating but undoubtedly painful reminders of what might have been.

For this entry, we’re going to be taking a look at My Bloody Valentine 3D Part 2, the shoulda-been sequel to Lionsgate’s surprise 2009 horror hit My Bloody Valentine 3D. Joining us for this chat is screenwriter Todd Farmer, who penned the original MBV 3D, as well as Drive Angry and Trick (each directed by his collaborator Patrick Lussier). During this talk, Mr. Farmer will discuss why the sequel he penned never happened, where its story would have gone, and whether or not the film could still happen all these years later.

For those who haven’t seen My Bloody Valentine 3D (shame!), or for those who haven’t revisited it in a while, a brief recap.

Ten years after murderous miner Harry Warden slaughtered numerous people in a vicious killing spree before disappearing into the Hanniger Mine that had previously employed him, prodigal son Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles) returns to his hometown of Harmony a decade after narrowly escaping the business end of Harry Warden’s pickaxe. In town to sell off his recently deceased father’s mine, Tom runs into old flame Sarah (Jaime King) before a series of grisly slayings puts Tom in the crosshairs of Sarah’s jealous husband Axel (Kerr Smith), the town Sheriff who believes that Tom may be responsible for the recent murders. Bodies fall while red herrings abound, until the tale ends where it began – in Hanniger Mine, where it’s revealed that the mentally ill Tom has in fact been carrying out the killings, believing at times that he’s masked miner Warden. A violent confrontation ends with Axel pickaxed and Tom shot by Sarah before all are caught in an explosion triggered by the gunfire. Axel and Sarah are rescued, neither realizing that an injured Tom has made it out of the mine as well…

Todd Farmer

Given the open-ended nature of the film and its financial success (over $100 million worldwide), a sequel to this slasher seemed all but inevitable. And yet, eleven years on, we have yet to see a follow-up. So what happened?

“We went in and pitched this probably two weeks before the movie came out,” Mr. Farmer explains. “We went in to Lionsgate and pitched to [Lionsgate Senior Vice President of Production John] Sacchi and [Lionsgate President Michael] Paseornek. Paseornek was familiar with the guys who did the original film, and so he was sort of a spearhead to get [the remake] made. And so, we went in and pitched them, and they loved it. Then the movie came out, and we were with a bunch of Lionsgate guys the night the movie came out, and they were nervous. They’d had kind of a bad run, and they had put everything into the marketing on [this film]. And the marketing was great for it. It opened great, it opened strong. I remember that Friday night one of the execs with us, all smiles, said something along the lines of ‘This is great, I have a job Monday’. So we kinda thought everything was gold. I, to this day, couldn’t tell you why it didn’t happen. There’s speculation. I heard that Lionsgate didn’t expect for there to be two, so they never cut a deal for there to be a second one.

“I also heard that [Co-Chief Operating Officer Joe Drake], who was running Lionsgate at the time … never liked the idea of the horror genre anyway, so they wound up doing a bunch of big budget romantic comedies and stuff instead. And every couple of years – or, there for a while, it was every year – we would reach out to the execs and say ‘We could still do it again!”. They were always enthusiastic, but just never pulled the trigger. Here we are, many moons later.”

So what would the story for the sequel have entailed? “We would have opened with Axel and Sarah in the ambulance. And [Deputy] Martin, played by Edi [Gathegi], would have been still at the site and in charge, because Axel had been pickaxed. We had Axel headed to surgery, and Sarah – pacing back and forth – goes to call her mom about her son. While she’s in there making the phone call, she sees bloody footprints. And then Martin, at the mine, would find the body of [the rescue worker Tom murdered], stripped of his clothes, and he immediately knows what that means.

“Back at the hospital, Tom comes out from behind [Sarah] and attacks. But we can clearly tell that it’s no longer Tom – it’s Harry, which is what we saw at the end of the first movie. So then Axel is in surgery. The anesthesiologist is about to put the mask over his face, and then Axel hears Sarah scream. So he starts fighting with the nurses and the doctors because he’s trying to get out of there, and he lunges off of the table. Meanwhile, you have Tom chasing Sarah down the hallways in the hospital. He shoves her to the ground, about to kill her.

“There was a Deputy Ferris who was in the [original film, portrayed by Karen Baum]. She went into the house with [Sheriff Burke, portrayed by Tom Atkins] in the previous movie. We were going to bring everybody back [from the previous movie] that was willing to come. She comes around the corner with a gun. Tom freezes, and [Ferris] helps Sarah to her feet. Then Axel comes around the corner, all bloody … and that’s just the sort of distraction Tom would have needed. He attacks and kills [Ferris] – probably a pickaxe through the temple, if I remember correctly. That seemed like a good death.

“Axel would have grabbed the gun. He shoots at Tom, who runs off into the stairwell. And then Axel and Sarah are reconnected. But [Axel’s] on a mission now. So they go into the stairwell, and they see at the bottom of the stairwell – there’s Tom’s body. He’s fallen off of the balcony, and he’s lying face down with blood everywhere. They rush downstairs, Axel with the gun out. When they get there, they find an orderly [instead of Tom]. Tom steps out from behind Sarah and yanks her into the hallway.

“He would then lock the door. You have those sort of hospital safety doors, with the wires inside. So [Axel’s] shooting, but the bullets aren’t going through. They have this standoff through that little thin glass – Axel can’t get to her, [while] she’s being choke-held by Tom.

“And then Tom, in the full miner’s suit, shoves her forward. Her hand’s on the glass, Axel’s hand is on the glass, and then she jerks. You see it in her eyes, you see the pain, and then she begins spitting up blood. And Axel’s screaming. She collapses to the ground to reveal Tom standing there with his bloody pickaxe and her heart in his other hand. Y’know, it’s a family movie!

“At that point, Tom is glaring at Axel, Axel’s glaring at him. And then – Tom comes back. It’s not Harry. He’s staring shocked, and confused. He sees the pickaxe, he sees the heart in his hand, he sees Sarah at his feet. He falls to the ground – ‘Oh my god, what have I done?’ Meanwhile, Axel is standing there glaring at him, the way no man has ever glared before, while Tom is sitting there cradling the dead Sarah. Then the title card would shoot through the screen – My Bloody Valentine 3D Part 2. The words slam out of the screen!” That’s a hell of an opening! “Yeah, I think so. Jaime King would’ve hated it! I don’t think we ever told her that’s how it would go down.”

So where would the story have gone after this opening? Mr. Farmer continues: “So it’s one year later. We open on this psychiatrist – I think her name was Doctor Josey. We were stealing Doctor Josey from [the unproduced] Halloween 3D, because we’d created her [for that] but never wound up using her. She’s sitting in one of these round circles, basically talking to a bunch of crazies. Four of them are standouts: this guy Weasel, who’s very angry; there are these twins, Trixie and Pixie; and there’s Marion, this giant hulk of a guy – and the plan was always to cast the Kurgan, to get Clancy Brown to come in.

“As they’re talking, you clearly hear that they are worshipping Harry Warden. Especially these four, they just love Harry Warden, everything about him. They just keep going on and on. She keeps trying to change the subject. She and Weasel get into this sort of argument, and then suddenly Doctor Challis comes in. We were going to figure out a way to get [Tom] Atkins to play the part – darken his hair, give him a big nose, do something – but we would bring Atkins back. He [would] be playing a similar part [as to his role in Halloween III: Season of the Witch].

“So Atkins comes in, and breaks up this fight. So we cut to – he’s walking out to his car, and somebody’s stalking him. We milk it, you see somebody’s coming, and you’re pretty sure it’s Harry Warden. And then just when he gets to his car, move to reveal: it’s Axel, drunk with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. [Axel] grabs [Challis], and shoves him against his car. And through the dialogue we learn that Atkins had determined that Tom was better, he was healed. He testified, and Tom was released. And so Axel is pissed. [We find out that] Tom was put into protective custody, change of name, the whole thing. So Axel keeps badgering Challis, wanting to know where Tom is. Josey comes out, she breaks them up, and the cops show up. Rather than letting it go, Axel punches [Challis] and is arrested.

“From here, we cut to a reporter in Kentucky, interviewing some miner. The guy keeps talking about a ’TJ Burke’. ‘He’s a damn fool.’ There’s been a cave-in, in the mine. ’TJ’s gonna go down there and save them all. Damn fool, he’s never gonna make it.’ We see that they’re lowering down a miner. Once we get down there, we reveal that this TJ Burke fella is actually Tom. He’s moving through the mine, and he finds the first wounded miner, and we’re wondering – “Oh my god, he’s gonna kill him.’ But he doesn’t, he actually saves him. He ends up saving everybody in the mine.

“All of the guys have been saved – ’It’s a miracle, he shouldn’t have been able to do this.’ And the reporter keeps trying to get to him, and he vanishes into the crowd. Back with Doctor Josey, she’s bailing Axel out of jail. As they’re leaving the police station, they see the footage of this mining cave-in in Kentucky. Sure enough – they see Tom in the background.

“Back in Kentucky, in some miner bar, there’s a big celebration after this rescue. All of the miners are all over [Tom]. There’s some drunk who picks a fight, just [being] belligerent. And you see Tom struggling with not losing it – we know, as the audience, that he’s struggling with not becoming Harry and just ripping this guy’s throat out. So Tom flees into the bathroom just to get away from him. He’s staring into the mirror, trying to hold it together, and this drunk miner comes in and punches him in the back of the head, smashes his face into the glass, knocks his feet out from under him, kicks him, then laughs and leaves the bathroom.

“So Tom struggles to his feet, looks into the broken mirror, and he sees Harry Warden. Back out in the bar, this guy is hacking it up with his buddies, he’s laughing, and then suddenly there’s Tom, standing in the doorway of the bathroom. He’s all bloody and bruised, and they’re just cracking up. So Tom cowardly walks across [the bar] to the exit. They’re heckling him the whole way. But rather than leave, Tom reaches up and grabs the pickaxe from above the door.

“Back to Axel and Josey, driving. We’d find out what had happened to Axel, he would get to know her a little more, and we’d kind of get the idea that he’s attracted to her. Martin, who’s now a Sheriff, calls and says ‘Look, if you’re going to do this thing, there’s this miner bar…’

“So they get there, and the first thing they see is a dead guy out in the middle of the driveway. Axel grabs his gun and runs inside. [Josey] hears something, then turns and looks and thinks she sees Tom, standing in the shadows. There’s a waitress, and she says [to Axel] ‘It was TJ Burke. He killed all the guys that he just saved earlier.’ By this point, Tom has escaped into the woods. Axel storms outside and demands that Josey show him Tom’s file.

“Tom, or more likely Harry, heads back to the insane asylum where he’d been held. He breaks in and releases all of the [inmates], and he starts killing. As he’s about to kill Weasel, who we saw earlier, Weasel’s like ‘Oh my god, it’s you! Harry!’ Because all of these guys liked Tom fine, but what they wanted was for Harry to come out. So then you’d have Weasel, and the twins, and [Marion] along with Tom. Meanwhile, Axel and Josey would have headed back to the insane asylum, and…”

Jensen Ackles, ‘My Bloody Valentine 3D’

And then? Well, it’s at this point that we’ll have to leave our heroes in order to preserve the parts of the story that might yet make it to the screen some day. “If we were to ever do this again – while we couldn’t use any of the stuff I’ve just told you, there are some twists and turns that we could still make work. But it was one of those situations where you don’t know who the miner is, and who isn’t. You don’t know who’s Tom, and who isn’t.” So there might have been multiple killers? “Yeah. I think that’s what would have made it harder on Axel and Josey [and Martin, who comes back into the story]. Oh, and Atkins would’ve probably gotten killed by that point.”

Why do you always have to kill Tom Atkins?! “We didn’t kill him in Drive Angry! And he likes dying, don’t let him tell you different. Although, from time to time [after the release of My Bloody Valentine 3D], he would keep saying ‘I coulda lived with a prosthetic jaw! I could be in the sequel!’”

What about that speculation you spoke about earlier – what kept the film from being made? What continues to keep it from being made? “They never declined to make it. The movie came out and did well, so Patrick and I were taking meeting after meeting after meeting because we had a big movie and we were suddenly the ‘It’ team, and everybody was interested in 3D. Although we kept getting this feeling that people thought it was a fluke. ‘Oh, you guys were successful because it was 3D.’ Meanwhile, the same people were setting up their genre departments to go out and make a 3D movie.

“When it’s all said and done, everybody went out and started making 3D movies, but we never did. Two or three weeks after the release, nobody was returning our calls at Lionsgate. So we never really knew what the deal was. There was some speculation that Lionsgate didn’t think [the first movie] would be a success … so they never thought to lock in the rights to a sequel. That was one of the things. And the other was that [Joe Drake] just didn’t like the movie, and didn’t like the genre. It was probably between those two things. There may have been another reason, I don’t know. But over the years, any time we’d go back and talk to the executives that were on it, they all wanted to make another one. It just never went above them.

“But, y’know, as I’ve said before: I alone, and together with Patrick, have pitched and written scripts for just about every franchise. The list just goes on and on. The Fly, Amityville, The Thing, The Exorcist. It’s the sort of thing where you do massive amounts of work with an entire story that’s fully blocked and thought out, and they just don’t happen. And you don’t get paid for that stuff some of the time. I mean, we did three massive drafts of Hellraiser. Huge, completely different. Now we got paid for that, but the movie just never got made.”

Was there ever the possibility that My Bloody Valentine 3D would’ve been even more than a two film franchise? Were there plans for a trilogy, or even beyond? “We certainly talked about it, and assumed from [the first film’s] success that ‘Well, maybe this is our Saw. Maybe this is our franchise that can go on and on and on. Make three or four, and then hand it over to somebody else to continue it. It frustrates me to no end to see these Icon Collections [with] Freddy, Jason, Chucky – all the different icons. And you very rarely see The Miner. Because we never got a sequel. We never got the other movie, we never had that franchise. Even though it was a decent movie, and the original movie is a good movie, you never see The Miner on any of the collections, or T-Shirts or artwork with everybody on it. The Miner’s hardly ever there. And that’s a shame, I think. So yeah, we talked about it. I don’t think we ever talked story, about what the third one would be.”

It’s been eleven years since the film hit theatres. If a sequel were greenlit tomorrow, would it look much different from what was already planned, or would an entirely different route have to be taken? “Even if, by some miraculous means, they came back to us and said ’So, we’re gonna do another one!’, we wouldn’t really use that story anyway. This story opened at the very end of the previous movie. Everybody’s now ten, eleven years older. We had loosely talked to Jensen, talked to Jaime and Kerr about doing the sequel, and they were all in. But now, it would have to be a completely different story.” So Sarah’s grim fate might not be a foregone conclusion? “The good news is, this is a completely alternative universe. We would have to do something completely different.”

Ultimately, how does Mr. Farmer feel about the sequel’s status? Does he hope that it will still get made some day, or has he let it go? “For just the franchise itself – I really like the original movie – because at that time, it was very unique. They weren’t kids, they were adults. It was a very different kind of slasher movie. I would like to see more of those stories. Even if Patrick and I didn’t tell those stories, I would like to have seen somebody do it. I would’ve liked for them to have given us a shot first! You know, we were up for [a new Halloween] a gazillion times, never got it. But we’re thrilled that they [eventually] made it.”

Very special thanks to Todd Farmer for his time and insights.