Robert Zemeckis has some bad news for fans who would love to see a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
The director appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz this week to discuss his newest film Here, starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. During the conversation, the host asked the filmmaker about a potential Roger Rabbit sequel.
“There’s a good script sitting at Disney, but here’s the thing: Here’s what you have to know, and you know this, the current Disney would never make Roger Rabbit today,” Zemeckis said. “They can’t make a movie with Jessica in it.”
Though it would seem, in theory, that the company wouldn’t pass up on what would probably be a popular sequel, the director pointed to Jessica Rabbit’s new Toontown ensemble in Disneyland, which is different than her appearance in the 1988 film.
“Look what they did to Jessica at the theme park,” he said. “They trust her up in a trench coat, you know.”
In 2021, Disneyland updated Jessica Rabbit’s look in the Anaheim park from her red dress to a trench coat, allegedly more in line with her new career as a private investigator, taking after Bob Hoskins’ Eddie Valliant in the project.
The Back to the Future helmer explained that when he first began working on the movie, a new regime had just entered Disney, and they were “full of energy” and excited for whatever came next.
“Then, I kept saying, and I sincerely say this, and I do believe this, and I say, ‘I’m making Roger Rabbit the way I believe Walt Disney would have made it,’” Zemeckis recalled on the podcast. “And the reason I say that is because Walt Disney never made any of his movies for children. He always made them for adults. And that’s what I decided to do with Roger Rabbit.”
Despite wanting to make the film the way that Walt Disney wanted, the Forrest Gump director admitted that he was still worried about showing it to children and their parents.
“One time we did a test preview with just moms and kids,” he said. “I was terrified because these kids were like 5, 6 years old. They absolutely were riveted to the movie. And I realized that the thing is, kids get everything. They understand. They get it. You don’t have to… I think the thing that Walt Disney never did was he never talked down to the children in his movies. He treated the kids like they were adults.”