Every Sequel To Best Picture Oscar Winners - Ranked
Did any of them live up to the original?
Sequel spawning isn't necessarily an indication that a movie is any good. Even the likes of Ghost Rider and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo went on to ride again, but there are times when follow-ups are made for all of the right reasons.
Some stories are so compelling that the next chapter simply cannot go untold, regardless of whether that leaves the sequel with massive shoes to fill and lofty box office expectations to live up to. Case in point, a number of the Best Picture winners at the Oscars have been followed by sequels, and their fortunes tend to be mixed.
Although most of the movies that have claimed to top prize are standalone offerings, from Ordinary People to Titanic, plenty have served as a starting point for a franchise, and in rare instances, the sequel has even surpassed the original.
At a time when virtually every movie exists within the confines of a blockbuster franchise or a cinematic universe, it's easy to come down with a bad case of sequel snobbery, but at least the Best Picture winners earned their follow-ups on merit.
10. Scarlett
Pitting Scarlet against the other films on this list is a trifle unfair, since Gone With the Wind's belated follow-up is a six-part TV feature and the rest are blockbuster sequels, but the CBS miniseries didn't exactly set the small screen alight.
After the original swept the Academy Awards in 1939, MGM asked Margaret Mitchell, who penned the novel it was based on, to provide a script for a big-budget sequel, only to have their offer declined. It wasn't until more than two decades after the author's death that her estate gave the go-ahead for a continuation of the story.
By this point, MGM was no longer interested in making Gone With the Wind 2, so a sequel didn't arrive until 1994 when Scarlet hit television, with Joanne Whalley and Timothy Dalton stepping into the roles made famous by Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.
The only thing Scarlet will ever be remembered for is the film it's a sequel to. That, and Dalton's rather striking moustache.