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We are in the era of reboots where those behind the scenes of the entertainment industry trigger nostalgia by bringing back shows and movies that have earned their stamps as (arguable) classics or adding to the story with a sequel. Another 90’s film that left its mark on the decade and thereafter may be getting that same treatment. Loretta Devine said there may be a sequel to Waiting to Exhale in the works while appearing on The Tamron Hall Show.
Devine said that the author of the book that the film is based on, Terry McMillan, has been trying to reboot the film for quite some time.
“I know that Terry [McMillan] and I think Lee Daniels are working on something because he’s been trying to get Waiting to Exhale back for so many years because it changed so much for everybody, not just Black women but also so many shows came out of that with the same girlfriend format that they used.”
She added that instead of focusing on the four women, the remake will focus on their children.
“I think they’re doing something about the kids of the women and I think that’s going to be coming out,” Devine added.
But can there be a Waiting to Exhale sequel without Whitney Houston? In 2013, Angela Bassett seemed to be working on a sequel that was based on the actual part two to the Waiting to Exhale novel titled Getting To Happy after Fox acquired the rights to make a sequel in 2010. However, in 2014 McMillian told Sister 2 Sister that a sequel was “dead in the water.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” she said. “I really don’t. It’s been horrible since Whitney passed away for a whole lot of reasons. Fox wanted to basically eliminate that character altogether from the story. How they thought that was going to work, I don’t know. As much as I loved Whitney and I loved her in that role…any time they can have seven different 007s, as iconic as Whitney was and still was, it was a role. It wasn’t Whitney Houston; it was Savannah; you know what I mean.[sic] I still think that Viola Davis would have done and could do a great job playing Savannah. They got somebody else to write the script. There have been two or three drafts, but it just wasn’t working.”
Let’s see if the sequel will come to life this time around.
