The movie business was a tough one, even for the moguls who built it up from scratch. The world was fickle and there was no telling what the public might embrace. One thing was for certain; if the public rejected something there was no going back. The Wizard of Oz was supposed to be a franchise for MGM, though when the movie disappointed at the box office, Louis B. Mayer wrote it off and sold the movie rights to his friend Walt Disney. As far as Mr. Mayer was concerned this franchise was DOA. Of course, the film's repeated exposure on television would transform this movie into a classic. It would be too late for a sequel, however.
All that changed with the advent of cable television and home videocassettes. Cable networks like HBO had hours of time to fill every day, so rather than just buy blockbuster films to air, they would often fill out their schedules with lesser films. Films like Eddie and the Cruisers.
Eddie and the Cruisers had been a critical and box office dud. The film hardly made a splash in theaters but it was nice enough for HBO. The pay channel put the film about a "legendary" singer who (SPOILER ALERT) fakes his own death in a selfish fight with the record label that leaves his bandmates without jobs or a future into heavy rotation. The film found an audience who seemed to enjoy the film's bizarrely 1980's soundtrack (despite this being a 1960's band) and movie producers made a note of its popularity. A videocassette release was even more successful, turning this Hollywood dud into a sleeper hit. The studio could have just sat back and raked in the windfall. This being Hollywood, however, the executives decided to spin the roulette wheel and did something unprecedented- they authorized a sequel to a film that had failed at the box office.
They took the charisma-free lead actor, sent him to Canada, surrounded him with a bargain basement cast and spit out Eddie and the Cruisers II. There were high hopes for the film this time, since the hope was that Eddie's numerous fans made from HBO would flock to theaters this time. Despite featuring a bargain basement Lily Tomlin and 1/3 of the original cast, the low rent film did even worse than its predecessor, quickly losing the money and goodwill drummed up by the first movie. While the first film became a mainstay of DVD dump bins around the country, the second film is often difficult to find; assuming that one is looking to find it, that is.
