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A fan with the pen name Stuffer Kolodny wrote a sequel screenplay called “Buckaroo Banzai and the Curse of Hanoi Xan” which can be found here:   https://buckaroobanzai.home.blog.

He notes on his webpage that, “This is a fan script. Buckaroo Banzai is the property of Earl Mac Rauch, WD Richter and MGM Pictures. I do not own Buckaroo Banzai or any of the characters or situations associated with the film Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, or its approved, associated works, including, but not limited to, the Buckaroo Banzai novel by Earl Mac Rauch, any comic books featuring Buckaroo Banzai or said characters or merchandise featuring their likeness or trademarked names.”

This script was in no way associated with or sanctioned by MGM, Harry Bailly Prod, or Earl Mac Rauch.

I asked Stuffer about the script and this is what he told me:

"I started it back in November of 2017. Wrote twelve drafts between then and January 2019. I’d go months without working on it, then go back to it, then away again. I’d say total, I spent five or six months actually writing it.

Now, Across the 8th Dimension had an indelible impact on me as a writer with respect to world-building and starting your stories in the second act. Screw exposition, get everybody moving at once and tell your story on the way. I love that. It’s a huge part of the film’s charm and what either brings in a new fan or sends a potential convert running the other way. You either get it or you don’t. You embrace the Banzai mythology, or you don’t.

But to me, for a new Banzai movie, that world, that mythos, needed to get even bigger.

My approach was that the original film deals mainly with what happens to Buckaroo directly. His world however, is implied to be so much larger, little of it as we see. He has the President’s ear, military contacts, a product line, a music career, a medical practice, a Jetcar, this massive headquarters – he’s worldwide. So I wanted to take a step back and look past the edges. To see the consequences of being Buckaroo Banzai. How his actions ripple through the world and result in a kind of constant chaos, day in, day out.
 
To do that, we needed to get past the sequel mentioned at the end of the film, Buckaroo Banzai Against The World Crime League. World Crime League is a done deal. It’s over and we have to move on. The original cast is too old and recasting for it makes no sense. But I got thinking: a different movie with the original cast passing the torch to a new crop of actors? That would work. That way, the audience sees Peter Weller, Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin and the rest side by side with these new actors. Basically saying to the fans, ‘This guy’s Buckaroo, now. These other guys are the Hong Kong Cavaliers, now. It’s cool.’

Maybe there’s a ‘World Crime League’ story that works for that, but I couldn’t think of one. What I could think of was a story that starts RIGHT AFTER a hypothetical World Crime League would’ve ended. That’s where this movie, Curse of Hanoi Xan, starts. In that world, this would-be Crime League film ends on an Empire Strikes Back-type cliffhanger, like the second part of a trilogy. 8th Dimension, Crime League, then Curse.

Lining up a new cast with the original one, well, time travel is the only way to do that. And with a nod to World Crime League, Hanoi Xan is the only villain to make it happen. Not with some lame machine, no, like they walk through a portal and meet themselves. This is Buckaroo Banzai. You need to get weird. My solution is unique, it ties into the first movie and it passes the torch. It works.

After that, I went with expanding Buckaroo’s world. In it, there’s never gonna be one problem at a time. It’ll be two and three and five and twenty problems at a time. So I expanded the Cavalier roster. I added another Institute. I made the Irregulars a kind of standing army. I put Blue Blaze offices all over the world. I introduced military liaisons and press agents and newscasters and screaming fans and Blue Blaze interns. I alluded to Buckaroo’s past and let Penny Priddy manage the Institute and split the universe off into two timelines. Then I added more Jetcars and stuck sponsor stickers all over them because how else is Buckaroo going to get them all built? I introduced BanzaiCorp because how else is he going to afford it? I re-introduce the watermelon because – what the hell’s with the watermelon? Then on top of it all, I introduced Laredo, Rawhide’s replacement.

Part of the soul of Across the 8th Dimension is deciding to kill Rawhide. Keeping him dead shows that as wild and weird as Buckaroo gets, his world has consequences. Also, people love Clancy Brown as Rawhide. I saw little point in keeping Rawhide around if he’s just going to be played by a younger actor. Besides, the complications of explaining his return derailed the story. Not to mention, Ernest Cline already tackled the problem in his Against the World Crime League fan script, it was a good solution that worked for that story and I wasn’t about to steal his idea.

Now, will the Curse of Hanoi Xan ever get made? Not in a million years. I have no illusions about that. But I’ll tell you something. I owe a debt to Buckaroo Banzai as a ten year old kid seeing that movie for the first time. And about fifty times after that. At least fifty. Once a year I sit down with it, sometimes two. No kidding – it inspired me, it stuck with me, it’s with me to this day. And I want that world to continue and while it may never happen on the big screen, I can give this to my fellow fans.

My contribution to keeping the myth alive."

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This page was last updated on March 5th, 2019.
Maintained by Sean Murphy [figment@figmentfly.com]