Paramount Home Entertainment announced this past week that director Patricia Birch’s Grease 2 will be celebrating its 40th Anniversary with a new Blu-ray edition on June 7.
They knew they had an iconic hit on their hands even before it opened theatrically on June 16, 1978. Grease, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John had tested off the charts with preview audiences, so producer/screenwriter Allan Carr (producer Robert Stigwood was eager as well) was already hard at work on the script for a sure-to-be sequel.
It was first titled Summer School and then it was changed to Son of Grease (which was just a place-holding “working title”) and then that mutated into Greasier and then the whole idea of a sequel was shelved by Paramount. Grease was such a hit that there was just no way that a sequel wasn’t going to somehow happen.
Paramount put it back on the schedule with Andy Gibb (of Bee Gees fame) and newcomer Robin Johnson (Times Square, After Hours, D.O.A.) rumored as being the co-stars. Nope, Kristy McNichol and maybe either Rick Springfield (who was basking in the glow of “Jessie's Girl” at the time) or Timothy Hutton (Oscar-winner for Ordinary People) would be the stars in what was now being called Grease 2.
Filmmaking is a process. Trade rumors, scheduling, production whims, financing, talent, story … and on and on. But in the end, Grease 2 opened theatrically almost exactly four-years-to-the-date after Grease lit the box office ablaze in 1978.
Relative newcomer Michelle Pfeiffer was the female lead (she would move to the A-list the following year for her performance as Elvira Hancock in Scarface) and stage actor Maxwell Caulfield (for all intents and purposes this was his film debut) was her co-star … but it would be Judy Garland’s daughter, Lorna Luft, who would steal the show in her screen debut as Paulette.
As for the film itself, well, Grease 2 didn’t quite have the same magic as the original.
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