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A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music, or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same fictional universe as an earlier work, usually following the events of that work.
In many cases, the sequel continues elements of the original story, often with the same characters and settings. A sequel can lead to a film series, in which key elements appear repeatedly. The difference between more than one sequel and a series is somewhat arbitrary.
Sequels are attractive to creators and publishers because there is less risk involved in returning to a story with known popularity rather than developing new and untested characters and settings. Audiences are sometimes eager for more stories about popular characters or settings, making the production of sequels financially appealing.
In film, sequels have become very common towards the end of the twentieth century.Russon, Joe and Larry Landsman with Edward Gross. Planet of the Apes Revisited: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Classic Science Fiction Saga. Thomas Dunne Books, 2001. p. 93. There are many name formats for sequels. Sometimes, they either have unrelated titles or have a letter added to the end. More commonly, they have numbers at the end or have added words at the end. It is also common for a sequel to have a variation of the original title or a subtitle. In the 1930s, many musical sequels had the year included in the title. Sometimes sequels are released with different titles in different countries, because of the perceived brand recognition. There are several ways that subsequent works can be related to the chronology of the original. Various have been coined to describe them.
A spin-off is a work that is not a sequel to any previous works, but is set in the same universe. It is a separate work-on-its-own in the same franchise as the series of other works. Spin-offs are often focused on one or more of the minor characters from the other work or new characters in the same universe as the other work.
A crossover is a work where characters or events from two previous works from different franchises are meeting in the same universe. Crossovers can also function as sequels if plotlines from the two previous works continue into them.
A reboot is a start over from a previous work. It could either be a film set in a new universe resembling the old one or it could be a regular spin-off film that starts a new film series. Reboots are usually a part of the same media franchise as the previous works, but not always. Kathleen Loock has written that traditional reboots tended to stray away from depicting direct narrative or stylistic correlations to the previous versions of the franchise. Contemporary reboots lean into the nostalgia factor and create new stories that simultaneously revel in the aspects of the original franchise that made it notable in the first place.
Akira Kurosawa's Sanshiro Sugata Part II (1945) was the earliest-numbered sequel in the history of cinema. Film director Francis Ford Coppola claims to have popularized the trend of including numbers in film sequel titles with The Godfather Part II (1974).
The substantial shift toward a rapidly growing print culture and the rise of the market system by the early 18th century meant that an author's merit and livelihood became increasingly linked to the number of copies of a work they could sell. This shift from a text-based to an author-centered reading culture led to the "professionalization" of the author—that is, the development of a "sense of identity based on a marketable skill and on supplying to a defined public a specialized service it was demanding." In one sense, then, sequels became a means to profit further from previous work that had already obtained some measure of commercial success.Budra, Paul, and Betty Schellenberg. "Introduction." Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel (Theory / Culture). New York: University of Toronto, 1998. Print. As the establishment of a readership became increasingly important to the economic viability of authorship, sequels offered a means to establish a recurring economic outlet.
In addition to serving economic profit, the sequel was also used as a method to strengthen an author's claim to his literary property. With weak copyright laws and unscrupulous booksellers willing to sell whatever they could, in some cases the only way to prove ownership of a text was to produce another like it. Sequels in this sense are rather limited in scope, as the authors are focused on producing "more of the same" to defend their "literary paternity".Schellenberg, Betty A. "'To Renew Their Former Acquaintance': Print, Gender, and Some Eighteenth-Century Sequels." Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel (Theory / Culture). Ed. Paul Budra and Betty A. Schellenberg. New York: University of Toronto, 1998. Print. As is true throughout history, sequels to novels provided an opportunity for authors to interact with a readership. This became especially important in the economy of the 18th-century novel, in which authors often maintained readership by drawing readers back with the promise of more of what they liked from the original. With sequels, therefore, came the implicit division of readers by authors into the categories of "desirable" and "undesirable"—that is, those who interpret the text in a way unsanctioned by the author. Only after having achieved a significant reader base would an author feel free to alienate or ignore the "undesirable" readers.
This concept of "undesirable" readers extends to unofficial sequels with the 18th-century novel. While in certain historical contexts unofficial sequels were actually the norm (for an example, see Arthurian literature), with the emphasis on the author function that arises in conjunction with the novel many authors began to see these kinds of unauthorized extensions as being in direct conflict with authorial authority. In the matter of Don Quixote (an early novel, perhaps better classified as a satirical romance), for example, Cervantes disapproved of Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda's use of his characters in Second Volume of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, an unauthorized sequel. In response, Cervantes very firmly kills the protagonist at the end of the Second Part to discourage any more such creative liberties.Riley, E.C. "Three Versions of Don Quixote". The Modern Language Review 68.4 (173). JSTOR. Web. Another example is Samuel Richardson, an 18th-century author who responded particularly strongly against the appropriation of his material by unauthorized third parties. Richardson was extremely vocal in his disapproval of the way the protagonist of his novel Pamela was repeatedly incorporated into unauthorized sequels featuring particularly lewd plots. The most famous of these is Henry Fielding's parody, entitled Shamela.Brewer, David A. The Afterlife of Character, 1726–1825. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2005. Print.
In To Renew Their Former Acquaintance: Print, Gender, and Some Eighteenth Century Sequels, Betty Schellenberg theorizes that whereas for male writers in the 18th century sequels often served as "models of paternity and property", for women writers these models were more likely to be seen as transgressive. Instead, the recurring readership created by sequels let female writers function within the model of "familiar acquaintances reunited to enjoy the mutual pleasures of conversation", and made their writing an "activity within a private, non-economic sphere". Through this created perception women writers were able to break into the economic sphere and "enhance their professional status" through authorship.
Dissociated from the motives of profit and therefore unrestrained by the need for continuity felt by male writers, Schellenberg argues that female-authored sequel fiction tended to have a much broader scope. He says that women writers showed an "innovative freedom" that male writers rejected to "protect their patrimony". For example, Sarah Fielding's Adventures of David Simple and its sequels Familiar Letters between the Principal Characters in David Simple and David Simple, Volume the Last are extremely innovative and cover almost the entire range of popular narrative styles of the 18th century.Michie, Allen. "Far From Simple: Sarah Fielding's Familiar Letters and the Limits of the Eighteenth-Century Sequel" in Second Thought, Edited by Bourdeau and Kraft. Cranbury, NJ: Rosemont, 2007. Print.
One reason they are prevalent is their ability to provide a stable revenue stream in a volatile market. Building on an existing brand with an established fan base, sequels are perceived as safer investments than new intellectual properties (IP). They allow companies to capitalize on previous successes, ensuring a built-in audience and reducing the financial risk associated with launching a new and unproven concept. Additionally, sequels of a formula that players already enjoy, balancing familiarity with new features or improvements, can increase player retention and positive reception.
A sequel to a popular but discontinued television series may be produced in another medium, thereby bypassing whatever factors led to the series' cancellation, such as Serenity (sequel to Firefly), (sequel to Downton Abbey), and Veronica Mars (sequel to Veronica Mars).
Some highly popular movies and television series have inspired the production of multiple novel sequels, sometimes rivaling or even dwarfing the volume of works in the original medium.
For example, the 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians, its 1961 animated adaptation, and that film's 1996 live-action remake each have a sequel unrelated to the other sequels: respectively, The Starlight Barking (1967), (2003, Direct-to-video), and 102 Dalmatians (2000).
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