The ‘80s were full of iconic movies that continue to remain relevant franchises today, such as Ghostbusters, Top Gun, Indiana Jones and The Karate Kid, but there have been a few that have surprisingly remained untouched by Hollywood’s love of sequels. Richard Donner’s 1985 movie, The Goonies, is a big example of this, but not for lack of trying. Goonies 2 has been a topic that's floated around for four decades now and there’s still no sequel where the adventurers could echo their iconic phrase, “Never say die!” With that on the brain, let’s break down what Steven Spielberg and the cast of The Goonies said about the sequel that has yet to happen.
While the group of misfits at the center of The Goonies were just kids when the movie was produced, just about all of them are working actors today, and its writers, Steven Spielberg and Chris Columbus, continue to be huge players in Hollywood. These are their thoughts about a Goonies sequel over the years.
Ke Huy Quan (Data)
Let’s start with the latest comment on the subject. Ke Huy Quan, who played Data at 13 years old, recently made a massive comeback to Hollywood with Everything Everywhere All At Once. As the actor recently shared, he quit being an actor once he grew up and found a lack of opportunities, but Crazy Rich Asians inspired him to give it another shot. Now he’s a Golden Globe winner and among 2023’s Oscar nominees. When the actor was asked about the status of Goonies 2 following his Golden Globe win, Quan said this:
You know, honestly, for the last 30 something years, we've tried to do a Goonies 2. In fact, when I was much younger, I wished it would come to pass because that was the movie I thought I would need to make a career comeback. Honestly, we had numerous scripts, but there was not one script that felt like it would be up to what the original was. Sadly, we lost the captain of our ship, Dick Donner, who I love dearly. I really don't know if there's going to be a Goonies 2. But, I would be open to revisiting that character, Data, if there is an opportunity.
Goonies director Richard Donner died at the age of 91 back in 2021 and as the actor shared, he was the “captain” of their ship. That being said, the man behind Data sounds open to a sequel, if the right idea comes up.
Sean Astin (Mikey)
In the years following leading The Goonies, as Mikey, Sean Astin went on to find an even more iconic role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy as the Samwise to Elijah Wood’s Frodo. Even so, the actor is asked all the time about making another Goonies movie. When he appeared at Rose City Comic Con in September 2022, he said this about the proposition:
Hope remains while the fellowship is true, something like that? It’s absolutely possible. I sense that the Goonies fandom may finally be piercing the veil of the leadership at Warner Bros. and Steven and them may start like doing cool stuff with it. I mean, people have been asking for it for years. As for me, have doubloon, will travel.
Astin took a more optimistic approach to the whole thing, sharing his “hope” for Warner Bros. to make moves on another Goonies movie. He had a sense that it could still happen, but he’s had various opinions on the subject prior. Back in 2019, he told Collider that he thought him and his co-stars had “probably passed the threshold” for doing a sequel, but was okay with the idea of a reboot. And back in 2015, Astin said that he knew in his “guts” it would get made one day.
Chris Columbus (Writer)
Chris Columbus, who has also been behind classic movies like Gremlins, Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter movies, wrote the screenplay for The Goonies. Columbus spoke to behind-the-scenes development on a sequel that never came to be to Empire in 2021. In his words:
[Richard Donner] called me and said, ‘You know what we should do? We’re gonna get on my boat, smoke pot for three days and come up with an idea for ‘Goonies 2’,” he says, laughing fondly at the memory. “I said to Dick, ‘Well, first of all, I don’t smoke pot. But maybe if I come down, we’ll have a couple of drinks together and sit on the boat.’ It never happened. And I regret that. Because I would drop everything to do that right now.
The writer/director shared this a few months following Donner's death. With that in mind, it appears the original director had been doing the sequel in his mind just before he died, but the filmmakers never got together to think up ideas.
Corey Feldman (Mouth)
You can also count Corey Feldman among The Goonies actors who are constantly asked about the sequel. Back in 2015, the actor had a seemingly major update on the whole thing, revealing that he and Sean Astin had co-written a pitch and taken it to Donner, but it needed “far too big a budget” for what they wanted to do. He called it an “Indiana Jones-type” movie that was “maybe too much.” When speaking again in 2021 about it to MovieWeb, Feldman had this to say:
It could happen, you never know. But, if that were the case, it would either have to be one of the cast members or it would have to be like Steven [Spielberg] or Chris [Columbus]. Or maybe if there was some kind of a pre-existing agreement between Dick and Adam Goldberg, because I know Adam Goldberg had just met with him to pitch Goonies, so if on the outside chance they had some kind of a deal written up where Dick had passed the torch and Adam could prove that, then maybe that could work. But that would be as far as I'm willing to stretch on it.
Adam F. Goldberg, who is behind comedy TV shows like The Goldbergs and The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers did, apparently, pitch to Richard Donner, per Slash Film, and has reportedly been trying to get a sequel made since 2005. Perhaps, he’ll still be successful someday, but for now, we haven’t heard anything new in years.
Jeff Cohen (Chunk)
Of The Goonies main cast, Jeff Cohen is one who did not go on to pursue acting. He instead has found success as an entertainment lawyer, and even represents Ke Huy Quan, as the actor revealed to The Hollywood Reporter in 2022. When looking back at his role as Chunk with Yahoo in 2015, here were Cohen’s thoughts on a sequel:
Look, being an actor is great, I miss being an actor. I think anyone who’s been an actor, you kind of miss it even if you were just in school plays. You miss it because it was a fun experience. But I think I’m going to stick with the entertainment-law thing. That seems to be working out.
Hey, that’s understandable. Not every child actor decides to actually get into Hollywood. And, technically, Cohen is in Hollywood, just not as an actor. So if a Goonies sequel did happen, it’s doubtful his Chunk would be part of it.
Josh Brolin (Brand)
Of The Goonies cast, Josh Brolin is likely the most notable and famous of them all. While Brolin has embraced his early role in the ‘80s movie in the past, he wasn’t optimistic about a sequel happening. Here’s what he told The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2014 regarding an update on Goonies 2:
It’s gotten to the point where they have said it so many times, where I’ll be this character [mimics a man in a walker.] … I would do it! I would do it. But every five years, I keep hearing that we’re going to do it, and then I’m like – and then finally, when you hear something like Richard Donner saying … but it’s on TMZ, so you can’t believe it. It’s like, ‘Yes! We’re going to do it!’ And I’m like, ‘It says TMZ on the bottom, man!’
It must be frustrating for the actors involved to hear about these updates, but never have a movie come to be.
Martha Plimpton (Stef)
Martha Plimpton, who played Stef in the movie, also wasn’t confident in the idea when she answered a question about it during a 2016 Reddit AMA prior to Donner’s death. In her words:
I wish I had an answer for you, but I can tell you that I really wouldn't expect it. It's been teased for decades and I don't think it's going to happen. At least, as far as I know. I think [director] Dick Donner, who is a brilliantly funny man, likes to torture us all with the prospect. I believe it's his revenge for having been tortured by all of us for 6 months in 1984.
It seems like Brolin and Plimpton shared this feeling that Goonies 2 was more of a tease over the years than a reality. That’s not to say they wouldn't be interested if the right script came along, however.
Steven Spielberg (Writer/Producer)
Perhaps it’d be Steven Spielberg, who wrote the original story and produced it, who could finally get Goonies 2 off the ground? The latest from the legendary filmmaker came during a Goonies reunion that Josh Gad hosted in his 2020 Reunited Apart series. Here are Speilberg’s thoughts:
Chris and Dick and I and Lauren [Shuler Donner] have had a lot of conversations about it, and every couple of years we come up with an idea, but then it doesn’t hold water. The problem is the bar that all of you raised on this genre. I don’t think we’ve really successfully been able to find an idea that is better than The Goonies we made in the ‘80s.
There you have it. That really seems to be the spirit of what’s been going on (...err not going on). There just hasn’t been a good enough idea that has propelled anyone involved to greenlight a sequel. Perhaps one day it will happen! Hey, it took 36 years for a Top Gun sequel to come out. Goonies could be next someday.
