Greg Mottola has proven to be a great comedy filmmaker, and his filmography is filled with gems such as “Superbad,” “Adventureland” “The Daytrippers.”
“Confess, Fletch,” released in 2022, was a return to form for Mottola, it starred Jon Hamm, in one of his best movie roles, as a charming man who gets amusingly entangled in a murder plot, all in the while trying to prove his innocence. The film garnered very positive reviews, and for good reason — this was a charmingly playful screwball noir.
Mottola has now gone on X/Twitter to confirm that the sequel has been nixed. Miramax nixed the entire thing. He was asked to elaborate, which sent him on a tangent:
The new head of Miramax, who controls the rights to all the books, shot down my sequel project. The Fletch curse got me […] The gatekeepers don’t see it, but I tried. Feature comedy is having a rough time […] I was okay with the idea of it probably being a streaming movie, but I was only going to do it my way […] I was told “the first one lost money” — as if there had been any attempt to make money. Jon [Hamm] was very into the new script. I’ve been rather depressed about it, but hard to expect a good break in the feature world these days.
Shortly after “Confess, Fletch” was released, Mottola was hired to write a sequel based on the 1978 novel “Fletch's Fortune.” Alas, it seems like it wasn’t meant to be. That’s too bad. In the meantime, if you haven’t seen “Confess, Fletch” then get to it, it reminded me of Shane Black’s acerbic and humorous comedy noirs.