Sky High Director Reveals Details of Disney's Unmade Superhero Sequel

CBR

By Brandon Zachary

Published Jan 28, 2019

Sky High director Mike Mitchell revealed the plans he had for a proposed sequel to the early 2000s Disney super hero film.

When it was released 14 years ago, Sky High was a live-action Disney film centering around a high school for super-powered teenagers, where people could learn how to become super heroes in their own right. Although the film was a modest success for the studio and earned a small cult following, it failed to earn enough for the company to green light a sequel.

Now, director Mike Mitchell has opened up about what he would have wanted to explore if there had been a sequel. The film ended with Michael Angarano's Will Stronghold and his friends from the "Sidekick" program saving the established super heroes from being reduced to children and ready to continue being a hero.

While speaking to Gizmodo about his new film The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, Mitchell spoke about how proud he still is of the super hero film. “I am hugely proud of it and they should make it a franchise," speaking fondly of the film and the proposed universe. In fact the same writers that didn’t get credit on it, [Jonathan] Aibel and [Glenn] Berger, they did a lot of writing on that film, and we have a whole sequel that’s called Save U [which stands for] Save University.”

Mitchell added that Disney even made plans to turn Sky High into a TV show.

“Except for Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston, every actor signed a contract to make it into a TV show," Mitchell said. "That was going to be Disney’s plan. But what happened was, when it came out, it was kind of an underdog that no one knew about."

The director also said that stiff box office competition from Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and March of the Penguins, a documentary that became an unlikely blockbuster success, helped seal Sky High's fate.

Ironically, a few of Sky High's stars went on to have more prominent superhero roles. Kurt Russell portrayed Ego in Marvel Studios' Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Danielle Panabaker went on to portray Doctor Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost in The Flash and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is set to portray the Huntress in Birds of Prey, which is currently set to be released on Feb. 7, 2020.