Casablanca (film) - Sequels and Other Versions

Sequels and Other Versions

Almost from the moment Casablanca became a hit, talk began of producing a sequel. One titled Brazzaville (in the final scene, Renault recommends fleeing to that Free French-held city) was planned, but never produced. Since then, no studio has seriously considered filming a sequel or outright remake. François Truffaut refused an invitation to remake the film in 1974, citing its cult status among American students as his reason. Attempts to recapture the magic of Casablanca in other settings, such as Caboblanco (1980), "a South American-set retooling of Casablanca", Havana (1990), and Barb Wire (1996), set in 2017, have been poorly received.

The novel As Time Goes By, written by Michael Walsh and published in 1998, was authorized by Warner. The novel picks up where the film leaves off, and also tells of Rick's mysterious past in America. The book met with little success. David Thomson provided an unofficial sequel in his 1985 novel Suspects.

There have been two short-lived television series based upon Casablanca, both considered prequels. The first aired from 1955 to 1956, with Charles McGraw as Rick and Marcel Dalio, who played Emil the croupier in the movie, as Renault; it aired on ABC as part of the wheel series Warner Bros. Presents. It produced a total of ten hour-long episodes. Another, briefly broadcast on NBC in 1983, starred David Soul as Rick, Ray Liotta as Sacha, and Scatman Crothers as a somewhat elderly Sam. A total of five hour-long episodes were produced.

There were several radio adaptations of the film. The two best-known were a thirty-minute adaptation on The Screen Guild Theater on April 26, 1943, starring Bogart, Bergman, and Henreid, and an hour-long version on the Lux Radio Theater on January 24, 1944, featuring Alan Ladd as Rick, Hedy Lamarr as Ilsa, and John Loder as Victor Laszlo. Two other thirty-minute adaptations were aired: on Philip Morris Playhouse on September 3, 1943, and on Theater of Romance on December 19, 1944, in which Dooley Wilson reprised his role as Sam.

Julius Epstein made two attempts to turn the film into a Broadway musical, in 1951 and 1967, but neither made it to the stage. The original play, Everybody Comes to Rick's, was produced in Newport, Rhode Island, in August 1946, and again in London in April 1991, but met with no success. The film was adapted into a musical by the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female Japanese musical theater company, and ran from November 2009 through February 2010.