10 Movie Sequels That Took 30 Years To Make

1. Return To Oz

Time Between: 45 years, 10 months

Following up any movie 45 years after the fact is a gargantuan task, but a movie as iconic and beloved as The Wizard of Oz? Good luck.

A spiritual, unofficial sequel to the 1939 original, Return to Oz was greenlit by Disney as they were imminently due to lose the rights to L. Frank Baum's Oz novels, with an entirely new cast (including a young Fairuza Balk as the new Dorothy). Hardly the best reason to make a sequel, then.

Was It Worth The Wait?

Anyone genuinely expecting Return to Oz to live up to the original was sure to be disappointed, though the film's darker tone did differentiate it from its predecessor and ensure it wasn't just the same movie all over again.

Though a box office bomb, it did receive an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects, and while a fundamentally uneven sequel, it deserves credit for its ambition and its boldness in getting much weirder than the first film.

It's at least worth watching once knowing outright that it's nothing on The Wizard of Oz, though for audiences avidly anticipating its release in 1985, it was surely a bit of a letdown.