Good news, Repo Man fans: there’s a sequel coming. No, it’s not the Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday comic, which was based on an unproduced Alex Cox sequel script; Repo Chick is being billed as an honest to god sequel, and it’s written and directed by Cox himself.
We’ve covered this film a little bit as it wound its way through the microfeature procuction process (a microfeature, under SAG rules, is made for $180,000 or less), but it’s been mostly under the radar. Now it’s wrapped and the shape of the film is becoming clearer.
Cox has already said that the movie would be set against the backdrop of our current economic crisis, with repo jobs getting bigger than cars and including ‘boats, houses, aeroplanes, small nations…children.’ But is it a direct sequel to the original, or just set in the same world? There doesn’t seem to be any actors coming back for the sequel. The titular Repo Chick is Jacklyn Jonet, playing a character that Cox calls a ‘bad, arrogant, intelligent person’ on his blog. She’s mentored by Grey, played by Miguel Sandoval. On his blog Cox reveals that Sandoval was not the original choice, and that the first actor – who had worked with Cox before – dropped out almost literally at the last minute to shoot a pilot. Could this role have once been Otto?
As for the rest of the film: it was shot on green screen, at least in part. Phil Tippett is the VFX guy on this one, and he’ll be filling in the green spaces. Which might include a giant robot, according to Cox’s blog.
I recommend you check out Cox’s site to read about the tribulations of shooting a microfeature (tribulations that got tougher when someone stole their equipment. Cox recalls that there was a similar theft on Repo Man, but of the lead car). The one thing he doesn’t mention that I keep wondering about is the soundtrack. Repo Man isn’t just a wacky science fiction cult film, it’s one of the great punk rock movies. It’s almost a historical document of hardcore. Is Cox going to be making music as integral to this movie?
In the end Repo Chick is pretty close to a mystery. The image I included in this piece is the only one I could find on the web, and beyond Cox’s blog there’s not much info beyond what I’ve shared and a partial cast list, which includes Ben Guillory, Xander Berkeley, Karen Black, Zahn McClarnon, and Robert Beltran. Now that the film is finished and is in Tippett’s hands, maybe we’ll be seeing something from it.
Thanks to Twitchfilm for making me aware that this film wrapped (a month ago. Hey, we can’t all be up on everything!).