Like all 1980s trends, the hot fad of “divorce” that swept the decade is up for a nostalgic revival in a sequel to The War Of The Roses, the 1989 black comedy that demonstrated why it’s always best to just end marriage with a nice, clean murder-suicide, because it causes far less property damage. The new film will be adapted from the follow-up novel, The War Of The Roses: The Children, written by Warren Adler, who also wrote the original book that provided the basis for the movie in which Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito showed that, sometimes, romancing the stone just isn’t enough.
Those actors’ participation seems unlikely here, as the sequel focuses squarely on their children, Josh (played by Sean Astin in the original) and Evie (who became “Carolyn” in the movie), who have each inherited their own problems. As described by the film’s production company Permut Presentations, the new War Of The Roses “will explore, with comedic irony, the underbelly of a troubled family which, in this new scenario has produced a serial adulterer, a gluttonous gourmand, the protective mother-in law and grandchildren who are deeply impacted by the generational dysfunction.” In other words, it’s about a new generation of terrible people behaving terribly, reflecting—with comedic irony—who we are now, thanks to the '80s craze for tearing homes apart, before we all learned that polyamory is the way to go.