Successful Musical Sequels?

I agree about the Marvin plays. Otherwise, Overkill's list sort of answers his question, "Why haven't there been more?"

And you can add "Let 'Em Eat Cake", a not-so-successful sequel to "Of Thee I Sing."

I think there may have been other sequels in the 20s and 30s when the plots of most musicals made little sense to begin with.

But since the truly "integrated" musical became so popular with "Oklahoma!", a successful musical is expected to have a unique look and sound. A sequel is almost by definition either a repeat or so different from the original that it is disappointing.

I enjoy Annie Warbucks over Annie.

for me i think it has something to do with the nature of the theater. a musical or a play - at least a successful one (arguably), is a total experience. it's hard to recapture that.

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Of course I don't know statistics but I can recall a lot of 'family'/children's movies and comedies that have sequels, too :P. So I don't know if I would say it is "usually" confined to the action genre..

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I don't think either of those can be called "successful."

The Marvin pieces are so frequently combined though (well - Falsettoland & March of the Falsettos)

"A lot of", golbinau? You mean like "Sex and the City" and "The Little Fockers" where each sequel is measurably worse than the last?

And children's movies--especially sequels--tend to be action movies, albeit with far lower body counts. I know this because I've had to sit through 17 iterations of "The Little Mermaid" with my granddaughter.

The first "Godfather" sequel was an exception (in which the sequel was a serious film with its own story to tell), as the next sequel proved.

My favorite sequel musical idea is "Say Darling" which was a follow up to "The Pajama Game." Never saw the show, but the concept is interesting to me. Very meta before meta was big.

From Wikipedia:

"In a case of art imitating life not once, but twice, the show is an adaptation of Richard Bissell's semi-autobiographical novel of the same name which chronicled his experience adapting his novel 7½ Cents for The Pajama Game, making it in essence a play of a book about a musical adaptation of a book."

Another Part of the Forest was produced after The Little Foxes and is a prequel, before there likely was such a word.
I have no knowledge if Another Part of the Forest was "successful" financially at the time.
Of course, neither is a musical....

Updated On: 9/26/11 at 05:28 PM

When I mentioned "action films", I did so in the broad sense of the word which includes horror movies and most sci fi. Also detective films, war movies, etc. Anything where the plot involves some sort of monster (human or otherwise) inflicting evil on hapless victims. Although sequels tend to be remakes in disguise, you can always find a new group of hapless victims for the monster to threaten, or a new monster for the superhero to fight.

In addition to the Neil Simon plays, there are numerous "sequels" in ancient Greek literature because they usually wrote their plays as trilogies for a day-long festival. Hence, Oedipus eventually gives way to Oedipus at Colonus and even Antigone (though these three plays weren't actually written at the same time or for the same festival or even in that order). A trilogy for their purposes wasn't always 3 plays with a continuous plot; sometimes the relationship between the works was thematic. But "sequels" were written; most have not survived.

The mind reels at the possibilities:

CAROUSEL 2: THE NEXT GENERATION
OKLAHOMA 2: DRILL BABY DRILL
AUTUMN REGRETTING
SPIDERMAN 2: PLEASE TURN THE DARK BACK ON

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