An unused sequel idea for National Lampoon's Vacation involved the Griswolds' divorce.
Franchise star Beverly D'Angelo, who played Ellen Griswold in the long-running comedy franchise, spoke to Screen Rant to promote her new movie Violent Night. During the interview, D'Angelo revealed a shocking premise for a discarded Vacation sequel that began with Clark (Chevy Chase) and Ellen Griswold in divorce proceedings. "I think the script by Michael [Rosenbaum] and Chris [Sullivan] started with Ellen and Clark outside of a courthouse where they've just gotten divorced," D'Angelo said.
"But their daughter is getting married, and she's adamant that they show up in Arizona or wherever she's living, so they have to go across the country and get back together," she continued. "And what's odd is: isn't that kind of the movie that George Clooney just made? Something like that? We saw it as, 'Hey, it's about Clark and Ellen and that family. Don't we want to follow their story?' But there's something about demographics, and I think they didn't want old people in it or something."
The Griswolds Stay Together for the Kids
Vacation began as a short story called Vacation '58 written by the late John Hughes and published in the pages of National Lampoon in 1979. Warner Bros. optioned the story and gave it to Caddyshack director Harold Ramis as his next project. Once Chevy Chase was cast as Clark, Ramis and the Saturday Night Live alum rewrote Hughes' script to be played from Clark's perspective rather than his son Rusty.
Released in July 1983, National Lampoon's Vacation was a massive hit, grossing $61 million on a $15 million budget. Its sequel, European Vacation, though successful, made less than its predecessor when it was released in the summer of 1985. But it was 1989's Christmas Vacation that not only topped the box office earnings of the previous entries but also became an enduring holiday classic, spawning a direct-to-video spinoff sequel in 2003 and a planned Broadway musical.
Later Vacation movies did not fare so well with critics and audiences. 1997's Vegas Vacation did the lowest numbers in the franchise. 2015's soft reboot Vacation starring Ed Helms as an adult Rusty Griswold was widely panned by critics despite grossing $107 million worldwide on a $31 million budget. In 2019, The Big Bang Theory star Johnny Galecki -- who portrayed Rusty in Christmas Vacation -- was reported to be executive producing a half-hour sitcom called The Griswolds for HBO Max. Tim Hobert was set to write the series which would see "what happens when the disaster-prone family returns home from vacation." The development status of the series remains unknown.
Source: Screen Rant