Exclusive: Jennifer Connelly talks The Rocketeer 30th anniversary & sequel
Before becoming an Oscar winner with her performance in Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind or scoring acclaim for her turns in Dark City and Requiem for a Dream, Jennifer Connelly was exploring the world of superheroes with Disney’s adaptation of The Rocketeer and while chatting with the star for the forthcoming second season of Snowpiercer, ComingSoon.net looked back with her on the action cult classic and asked about her involvement in the in-development sequel.
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Connelly, who starred in the original film as aspiring actress Jenny Blake, also romantic lead for Billy Campbell’s Cliff Secord, laughed when thinking back to the fact it’s already been 30 years since the Joe Johnston-helmed film hit theaters, but when asked about the follow-up the House of Mouse is finally working on, she revealed she wasn’t even aware of the existence of the project.
“I had no idea they were doing a sequel, and I can’t believe it’s also been 30 years, that’s crazy!” Connelly brightly said. “I thought that movie was a lot of fun and I had a lot of fun doing it, I won’t speak to what’s happening with the sequel, as I haven’t heard anything about it.”
Click here to purchase the 1991 cult classic!
Co-written by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo and helmed by Johnston, the original film was set in 1938 Los Angeles, California and centered on stunt pilot Cliff who stumbles upon a hidden rocket-powered jet pack that he uses to fly without the need of an aircraft. His heroic deeds soon attract the attention of Howard Hughes and the FBI, who are hunting for the missing jet pack, as well as the Nazi operatives that stole it from Hughes.
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Made on an estimated $40 million budget, the film was not a commercial hit, grossing just over $46 million domestically, but was a modest critical hit, earning positive reviews for its throwback to the pulpy serials of its story’s setting and its visual effects. A trilogy was initially envisioned for the material, but due to the underwhelming box office numbers, Disney scrapped the idea and continued to explore potential reboots and remakes in the decades that followed. The most recent news came last year that Azia Squire is penning the script for a sequel set six years after the original film and will center on a Black female pilot taking on the moniker as she searches for a missing Cliff and seeks to stop a corrupt scientist from stealing jetpack technology that could shift the balance of the Cold War.