There have been a lot of small, brilliant pieces of movie news lately. Cool ideas and interesting people attached to projects with potential. That’s why it’s particularly bitter to hear news that feels a lot like gargling acid. This specific swallow comes from Deadline Fredericksburg who report that Universal is back to mining their own library to come up with Midnight Run 2. Maybe a sequel would be a good idea. Who knows. Martin Brest had his own sins as a director, but Beverly Hills Cop and Midnight Run were his best. It’s tough that he ended his career on Gigli, but it might be even tougher that Universal is working with Brett Ratner to direct a sequel to the Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin-starring flick about an accountant trying his best to keep breathing while the FBI, some bounty hunters and the mob are on his tail. What’ even better than his aggressive mediocrity is that they’ve got David Elliot and Paul Lovett (Four Brothers and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) to write the script.

If there’s one thing the world needs, it’s another installment of the Melvin-ing adventurers Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted Theodore Logan. This is empirically true and can be shown through science (the act of pouring different colored liquids into other containers of different colored liquids). The team over at /film has gathered together some information about the possible project, but the key component is that Alex Winter is now currently reading the script, which means that a script for Bill & Ted 3 exists. Ostensibly, the story will focus on the pair writing the song that changes the world, but how will they travel in time in a world without phone booths? Oh, God. This thing is really happening, isn’t it? If only there were a way to go back in time and stop it from happening…or maybe it’ll be awesome beyond belief, and it’ll be the movie that finally brings the world together. Wouldn’t that be great? Remakes and decades-later sequels are just as in demand as “being meta” so if they can manage to make a movie about saving the world through music that ends up saving the world, that would be the highest grossing film of all time. Science strikes again.

Every week, Landon Palmer and Cole Abaius log on to their favorite chat client of 1996 as ghostfacekillah and olddirrtybastard5 in order to discuss some topical topic of interest. This week, it’s the horrifying growth of the trend in Hollywood to take old movies and make sequels for them. The fans are too hip to reboots and remakes, but if they can convince an aging actor to retread barren ground, then it’s all aboard the money train. Of course, that’s not always the case, but how else do you explain Indiana Jones 4? The problem is that these movies either suck or are hollow shells of what a franchise once was. So if you’re making a decades-later sequel, what are the problems and how do you avoid them?