Why was there never an Airplane! 3?

Much though we love Airplane!, we can’t say that it’s the kind of film that was crying out for a high definition release. Nonetheless, in the States, a Blu-ray of the film is coming out (although it’s exclusive to one retail chain for the time being), and as part of the promotional work for it, the star of the movie, Robert Hays, has been nattering about the film.

Over at Moviefone, he was asked why a third Airplane! movie never happened. Airplane! 2: The Sequel, of course, took place without the direct involvement of the original ZAZ creative trio (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker), so a third movie in the series should have been possible. But, it seems, Hays put his foot down.

“It was very close. You have to understand the atmosphere, 31 years ago. Sequels were frowned upon. You were really looked down upon if you did sequels – that was all you could do, you can’t do anything else. They’d go, ‘Oh, Robert Airplane Hays, you ever gonna do something besides Airplane?’ I was doing other films, it’s just that was the attitude that they took. Nowadays, sequels are called franchises. Now they look for them.”

Hays added that “I was in London doing a film called Scandalous, at the time, and they were negotiating for doing Airplane 3, and it had really gotten to me. I was being ragged on by the press a lot when I’d go to events and the paparazzi’s there, and they would rag on me. I said, “Nah, don’t wanna do it.” Of course all that did was raise the price more and more and more. When finally I said, “I’m not going to do it,” that was it, they didn’t do it. Of course, I wish we had done it, looking back now, but you know, that was then and this is now.”

It’s an interesting piece, and you can read the full interview with Robert Hays, here.

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