‘The only way the story continues is if it has nothing to do with the first one’: The director of an acclaimed Netflix original nobody watched open to a sequel

Netflix has never made any bones about its desire to build and expand as many of its own blockbuster franchises as possible, but it’s bitingly ironic that one of the streamer’s best-ever genre films may not have proven successful enough to warrant a second installment.

Big budget adventures like Red Notice, The Gray Man, and Extraction all have additional chapters in the works – and Heart of Stone is almost certain to join it based on the early numbers – but They Cloned Tyrone ended on a winning note that both tied up its own story while leaving the door ever so slightly ajar to continue telling new tales set in the offbeat sci-fi world established by co-writer and director Juel Taylor.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the filmmaker admitted a sequel isn’t entirely out of the question, with the caveat that it would need to be as markedly different as possible from what came before.

“The only way the story continues is if it has nothing to do with the first one. We always joked that Fontaine, Yo-Yo and Slick Charles are gonna start a bakery, so we’re just gonna make Mystic Pizza next time and not even reference anything that happened in the first movie. It’s gonna be the three of them going into the restaurant business. So, if we ever did another one, it would have absolutely nothing to do with the first movie. It’s an open-ended story, but it’s a closed loop in terms of character. They’ve done what they needed to do in terms of finding out who they are and what they want out of their lives.”

More They Cloned Tyrone, except that it’s got absolutely nothing to do with They Cloned Tyrone? It sounds nuts, but based on how great the movie turned out, it’s an option well worth considering if Netflix decides it’s an avenue worth exploring.