US News

Screenplay it again, Sam: Another ‘Casablanca’ sequel script surfaces

‘2’ LATE: Albert Tapper holds second “Casablanca” sequel script. Left, How we told of earlier script find. (
)

Another proposed sequel to the classic movie “Casablanca’’ has surfaced, also written by one of the original film’s authors.

After The Post reported in November about efforts to develop a treatment for a follow-up written by Howard Koch, a memorabilia collector told The Post he had purchased the manuscript for another treatment that takes a different twist on the iconic original.

Like Koch’s treatment, the second treatment by Murray Burnett — who co-wrote the unproduced play “Everybody Comes to Rick’s’’ that became an Oscar-winning script by Koch and the twin screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein — was penned in the 1980s.

But it’s very different than Koch’s treatment, which was set in the 1960s and centers on the now-grown son of Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund — played in the original by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman — who has returned to Casablanca to search for his dad, missing since the war.

The late Burnett’s treatment, on the other hand, takes place just three years after the end of the movie, in 1944. World War II is still raging, and Rick is running Rick’s Cafe Americain — named after the joint he hastily abandoned in Casablanca — in Portugal.

“Sam is noodling away at the piano,’’ the treatment says, and in walks the former police captain Renault, who fled Casablanca with Rick after the shooting of Major Strasser.

It seems Rick’s former lover Ilsa is in town following the death of her husband, Victor Laszlo. “The reunion of Rick and Ilsa is electric,’’ according to the treatment, but “marred by an undercurrent that Ilsa senses but finds puzzling.’’

After a young man is shot in the head following the bombing of the German embassy, it’s revealed that Ilsa wants Rick to help with her stepdaughter Elena, Victor’s daughter by a previous marriage.

Elena is being sought by the Germans because she has a roll of microfilm containing the names of Nazi collaborators compiled by Allied officers.

Collector Albert Tapper, who bought the manuscript from Burnett’s widow, says he think it’s unlikely this treatment could ever be produced. “It’s too much like the original, and who could you get to play such iconic roles as Rick and Ilsa?’’ he said. “But it’s a great collectible, a typewritten original with a coffee-cup stain on the cover.’’

Burnett sent the treatment to his agent, but Warner Bros. — which produced the original and owns sequel rights — “just wasn’t interested,’’ said widow Adrian Burnett.