‘L.A. Confidential’ Writer Says Sequel Rejected by Multiple Studios

“L.A. Confidential” writer Brian Helgeland has obsessively tried to kickstart a sequel to the 1997 classic for almost 10 years now. At one point, Helgeland met with Warner Bros. about this sequel until the entire thing was nixed by them. It would have starred the late Chadwick Boseman.

Now, Helgeland is expressing frustration, talking about how he loved the idea, but that multiple studios, including Warner, just didn’t vibe with it.

James Ellroy and I worked out an elaborate pitch for ‘L.A. Confidential 2’ that takes place during the Patty Hearst [era], when the Symbionese Liberation Army came down to L.A., and we had Guy Pearce attached and Russell [Crowe] and Chadwick Boseman playing a young cop working for Mayor Bradley. We pitched it everywhere…We had to go to Warner Bros. first and Warner Bros. is like we don’t make movies like this. Ellroy is a performance artist and he would do the pitch, and it was the most amazing pitch.

He added, “Our executive at Netflix fell asleep during the pitch. They fell asleep and nodded off during the pitch. I got home, and was like, ‘We can’t do that anymore.’”

One has to wonder that, if Netflix, WB, and other studios passed on “L.A. Confidential 2,” then how bad could the pitch have been? Crowe and Pearce were willing to return.

For some reason, Ellroy recently bashed Curtis Hanson’s film, saying it was “a turkey of the highest form.” Hanson died in 2016. His “L.A. Confidential” was released in 1997 to rave reviews and plenty of Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. The film helped launch the careers of Crowe and Pearce. But I will say that Kim Basinger winning Best Supporting Actress at the 1998 Oscars hasn’t aged well at all. It was a very thin role.

Hanson and Helgeland did win Best Adapted Screenplay. In total, the film received 9 Oscar nominations, but lost the big prize to James Cameron’s “Titanic.”

Both “Titanic” and “L.A. Confidential” have aged decently well, but I would have chosen Ang Lee’s “The Ice Storm,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” or even Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown” as top of the class for 1997.