‘Sex and the City’ Movie: Will There Ever Be Another Film?
It’s been almost a decade since a Sex and the City movie was on the big screen, despite promises for more. While the TV series is still considered a pioneering TV classic, the movies more or less hit a roadblock after the second film. You can’t blame carping critics, because fans still gobbled the movies up.
A few years after Sex and the City 2 released, at least fans had a brief prequel TV series on CW called The Carrie Diaries. Even then, things weren’t quite the same as when seeing an adult Carrie and her friends.
A third film; however, was nixed a little too fast due to a cast member’s creative demands.
‘Sex and the City’ is a book adaptation
When Sex and the City debuted on HBO in June of 1998, Candace Bushnell’s book of the same name was published only a year prior. But HBO didn’t hesitate to give a TV adaptation at the drop of a hat. Perhaps they predicted showcasing explicit sexual subjects while delving into the psychological aspects of women’s relationships would put the network above any other cable channel.
Their instincts were right, as we all remember. It’s still amazing a generation had gone by, though, who might not even remember when Sex in the City was in the first-run production on HBO. In a time when Game of Thrones has completely overshadowed everything that came before on the network, let’s keep in mind the unfiltered dialogue, and sexual situations all stemmed from Sex in the City.
After several years and numerous Emmy wins, the show became a phenomenon on its own, basically becoming larger than the initial book. You can sort of compare it to the Game of Thrones of the day where the show ended up running away from the book. The only difference is Bushnell didn’t become quite as much of a household name as George R.R. Martin’s name has.
Once Sex in the City ended in 2004, the endless copycats and the immediate reruns themselves helped spur interest in the idea feature films could expand on the iconic characters and their NYC adventures.
The ‘Sex and the City’ films didn’t do well with critics
To date, the Sex and the City movie adaptations are part of a small group of HBO media properties made into movies. Maybe that’ll change someday if we ever see a Game of Thrones reboot for the big screen, even if HBO is the official big screen nowadays.
Despite two Sex in the City movies being made in 2008 and 2010, critics didn’t love them compared to the accolades the HBO show received. Perhaps you can argue it was impossible to encapsulate the stories of these women (and men) into a two-hour film and have it mean something beyond being an extended regular episode.
This isn’t a new problem when adapting other TV shows to feature films. Regardless, more producers have come up with creative solutions to set movies apart from their TV counterparts.
Fans didn’t care, making the first feature a huge box office success. The sequel in 2010 did equally as well, leading everyone to assume a third film would be on its way within a couple of years.
Everyone was ready to shoot the third film
Apparently Mr. Big was going to be killed off at the beginning of the third film. He reportedly was going to die in the shower of a heart attack, making the rest of the film how Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) deals with the emotional aftermath.
Kim Cattrall, who plays Samantha Jones, didn’t like the idea or in realizing her character would be minimized. She’s also been fairly blunt in recent years about not being exactly friends with Parker. Without Cattrall there, the film was canceled.
Most recently, Cattrall said in an interview with the Daily Mail that she would “never” be in another Sex in the City movie. “You learn lessons in life, and my lesson is to do work with good people and try and make it fun,” Cattrall said.
Now, several years later, it looks like there won’t be any more Sex in the City films made unless some miracle occurs of cast integration. While the world focuses on bigger issues in films, perhaps a movie about sexual problems/conquests wouldn’t go over well now until we find ourselves back in the ’90s bliss from where the show started.
