10 Movies That Accidentally Set Up Sequels
3. The Godfather
When Francis Ford Coppola teamed up with Mario Puzo to adapt his novel The Godfather into a movie, he never saw it as anything more than one film.
When the door is closed on Michael Corleone's (Al Pacino) wife Kay (Diane Keaton) at the end of the film, it truly feels like the door being closed on the the story and indeed the audience, too.
Coppola confirmed as much in a 2008 interview with Film Comment, where he maintained that despite the open ending, he envisioned it as a single piece:
"I never wanted to make a third Godfather. I never wanted to make a second Godfather. I didn't think The Godfather was a serial-type story. To me the first Godfather was the Godfather, and everything else is greed."
In an interview with Howard Stern, he added:
"I thought [the first film] was a drama and it was over and that was the end, and Michael, you know, kind of corrupted himself and that was the story."
Yet given that Coppola and Puzo decided to deviate from the ending of Puzo's novel, by having Kay realise Michael's true nature in elliptical, downcast fashion, they were inadvertently sewing dramatic seeds that audiences were eager to see explored further.
And so, in light of the film's massive critical, commercial, and awards success, Coppola was convinced to helm the sequel, with the promise of having full creative control on the project.
Like its predecessor just two years prior, The Godfather Part II was a tremendous success, winning Best Picture at the Oscars just as the original did, with many believing it to have surpassed the first film's dramatic accomplishments.
History repeated itself again, though, when Coppola truly believed he'd closed the book on Michael's story, only for dire financial straits caused by the failure of his 1982 musical One from the Heart prompting him to direct the divisive third film.