Lou Lumenick

Lou Lumenick

Movies

Why the ‘Wonderful Life’ sequel won’t happen

Relax, everybody. The odds of the newly “announced’’ sequel to the beloved “It’s a Wonderful Life’’ ever being actually made are about as good as embattled Toronto Mayor Rob Ford being elected Canada’s prime minister.

For starters, the producers don’t even appear to have secured the rights to the original story. According to the Hollywood Reporter, producer Bob Farnsworth “checked on the rights, which were in the public domain, and wrote a screenplay with Martha Bolton, who worked with Bob Hope as a staff writer on the comedian’s specials.’’

I guess Farnsworth and the writer of the Hollywood Reporter article — or Variety, which breathlessly broke the click-baiting “exclusive’’ yesterday — didn’t even bother checking Wikipedia. If they had, they’d’ve discovered that while the copyright for the film itself expired in 1974 because of a paperwork error, the copyright for the story that inspired the film (“The Greatest Gift’’) was properly renewed in 1971.

“It’s a Wonderful Life’’ circulated freely for years in the public domain. But in 1987, Republic Pictures began enforcing ownership because it controls the story rights, a position upheld by a 1993 court ruling. Republic is defunct, but those story rights have passed to its corporate successor, Paramount Pictures, which collects a reported $1 million a year from NBC to show the movie.

If Paramount were somehow interested in an “It’s a Wonderful Life’’ sequel, it sure wouldn’t be a modest $25 million production from the likes of Farnsworth, whose credits include a Prilosec commercial starring Larry the Cable Guy.

And it probably wouldn’t incorporate Farnsworth’s and Bolton’s bright idea of a prominent role as an angel for Karolyn Grimes — who played Zuzu in the original movie, but hasn’t acted in a film in . . . 61 years.

Certainly the cornball “trailer” Farnsworth put up for their fantasy project — spotted yesterday by Vadim Rizov at The Dissolve — isn’t terribly promising. Farnsworth immediately took it down, but left up his not much more convincing pitch from 2010:

Update: Paramount Pictures put the kibosh on the project Wednesday. A spokesperson gave The Post this statement:

“No project relating to ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ can proceed without a license from Paramount. To date, these individuals have not obtained any of the necessary rights, and we would take all appropriate steps to protect those rights.”