While Robert Redford was no fan of sequels for the better part of his career, there was one movie of his that remained a top candidate for a follow-up, even decades after the original hit theaters.
The legendary actor, filmmaker and Sundance Institute founder, who died Tuesday at 89, leaves behind a legacy marked by such classics as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and All the President’s Men. In 1972, he starred in director Michael Ritchie’s political satire The Candidate as Bill McKay, an unlikely upstart candidate for the California Senate race who shakes up the establishment. The feature earned two Oscar nominations, including a win for Jeremy Larner’s screenplay.
Filmmaker Rod Lurie, who directed Redford (alongside James Gandolfini and Mark Ruffalo) in the 2001 film The Last Castle, tells The Hollywood Reporter that he and his star spent years bouncing around ideas for a planned sequel to The Candidate, which followed Lurie having written and helmed the 2000 Oscar-nominated political thriller The Contender. Conversations about a sequel to The Candidate began while the pair worked together on The Last Castle, which focused on a struggle for power within a military prison, and continued for some time after production ended. Although he recalls Redford liking his story idea, Lurie ultimately never started on a draft.
“One of his hopes was to continue this story of Bill McKay,” Lurie says. “He’s an infamous developer and works on scripts endlessly. So it was in the discussion phase and mostly, ‘What was it going to be?’ The two actors that we wanted to have [were either] Denzel Washington and George Clooney. [Redford’s character] would be an ex-president at this time, advising a new candidate.”
Robert Redford (left), Mark Ruffalo and Rod Lurie on the set of The Last Castle.
Courtesy of Everett Collection
Lurie continues, “We just spent so many hours discussing it and what he wanted to do, what he didn’t want to do. And then we would exchange letters [after production ended on Last Castle.] It just never came to pass.”
Ultimately, Redford changed paths on the possible sequel and turned to Larry Gelbart, a producer on the series M*A*S*H and co-writer of Tootsie, to pen a script. The pair spoke to the New York Times in early 2003 about the project, with Redford calling himself “anti-sequel” but explaining that the timing felt right to again skewer American politics. He added, “The truth is so awful, but in its own horrible way, it’s entertaining.”
Although Redford would eventually appear in a sequel later in his career — he reprised his Marvel role of Alexander Pierce in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame after previously playing the character in Captain America: The Winter Soldier — a follow-up to The Candidate would never get the go-ahead.
But Lurie is grateful to have worked with Redford, praising his work with Sundance and his incredible catalog of films — with an emphasis on one title in particular. “He starred in the greatest film ever made — that’s my personal opinion — which is All the President’s Men,” Lurie says. “When I was on the set of The Last Castle with him, we had dinner three nights a week, and we never really exhausted talking about All the President’s Men.”
