The original: Despite being a Christmas classic that gets revived on TV and in cinemas every festive season, It's A Wonderful Life isn't a particularly cheery film. In fact, for the first two hours of its 130 minute running time, it's pretty bloody depressing, as James Stewart's unfailingly lovely George Bailey faces ruin at every turn, decides to commit suicide, and is only brought back from the brink by an angel reminding him how everyone in his hometown is hopelessly dependent on him. The sequel: At least it had a semi-happy ending, though, with the town rallying around the down-on-his-luck George and family to make their Christmas as magical as they deserve. Which would totally have been spoilt by a sequel, which was going to follow the angel of George Bailey's daughter Zuzu as she shows George's evil grandson how different the world would have been if he had never been born. The directors announced they were looking for directors and hoped to shoot the film with a $25$35 million budget in Louisiana early in 2014. The one thing they'd forgotten was to actually get the rights to make a sequel from Paramount, which killed it pretty quickly.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
