How Francis Ford Coppola Ruined the ‘Airplane!’ Franchise
Airplane! is generally considered to be one of the greatest movie comedies of all-time. The sequel, which introduced William Shatner and a bomb-wielding Sonny Bono to the franchise, not so much.
The steep drop in quality can be explained by the fact that Airplane II: The Sequel was helmed by Canadian comedy writer Ken Finkleman, and not the original filmmaking team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker.
Well, it turns out that ZAZ did offer to helm a follow-up to Airplane!, but their plans were torpedoed by legendary director and wine magnate Francis Ford Coppola.
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David Zucker recently sat for an interview with right-wing YouTuber, and star of the “South Park of X,” Dave Rubin. Zucker discussed how ZAZ was approached by Paramount to make Airplane II, and they even put together a pitch that would have picked up right after the events of the original film. “Bob (Hays) and Julie (Hagerty) fly down the plane, and he takes her home to meet his family, and it’s The Godfather.”
As the late Jim Abrahams revealed in the book Surely You Can't Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!, the story would follow the characters of Ted Striker and Elaine Dickinson in a non-aviation scenario. “We thought we could use those same characters but not have to be trapped in an airplane the whole time,” Abrahams explained. “And we had pretty much run out of airplane jokes.”
So instead, they would parody the acclaimed Godfather series. ZAZ even came up with an idea for the poster: the familiar twisted plane from the original Airplane! poster dangling from the marionette strings made famous by The Godfather’s poster.
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The directors pitched their concept to Michael Eisner and future Quibi genius Jeffrey Katzenberg, who were at Paramount at the time. The executives “loved it” but clearly didn’t want to tick off Francis Ford Coppola, who had made the Academy Award-winning Godfather films for the studio. “They said they’d better go to Francis to see if it’s okay,” Zucker recalled. “And Coppola said ‘no.’ He didn't want us to do it because he wanted to do The Godfather Part III.”
Of course that may not have been the best idea. “Looking back on it, everyone would have been better off if we’d done Airplane II: The Godfather,” Zucker added.
Incidentally, Abrahams did eventually direct his own Godfather parody, 1998’s Mafia!, originally titled Jane Austen’s Mafia, which starred Airplane!'s Lloyd Bridges as a Don Corleone-like mobster.
And even it was better than The Godfather Part III, at least in terms of the number of exploding fart scenes it featured.
