Despite being a hit The Jewel Of The Nile ended up stalling a potential High Road To China and Romancing The Stone. This 1984 Robert Zemeckis directed movie cast Kathleen Turner as romance novelist Joan Wilder, who winds up on a crazy adventure in Columbia alongside roguish adventurer Jack Colton (Michael Douglas).
Romancing The Stone combined a fun adventure with the potent chemistry between Turner and Douglas, and while the studio expected little from it, it turned out to be a surprise hit. 20th Century Fox was on a roll of underperforming movies during this era, so when they had an honest to goodness hit on their hands with franchise potential, they wanted a sequel. The problem is they wanted it right away and penciled in a release date for December 1985, which gave the production about a year and a half to mobilize.
Another issue is that nobody was particularly enthused about jumping right back in, but Michael Douglas - who was also the producer - Danny DeVito and Kathleen Turner were bound by contract to do so. Turner found the script for The Jewel Of The Nile to be awful and tried to get out of making it. She ended up being faced with either returning or potentially losing a $25 million lawsuit. She relented and while Douglas promised the script would improve with rewrites, she was still unhappy with the material she was presented.
Robert Zemeckis was also busy on Back To The Future, so new helmer Lewis Teague was drafted despite having little experience with a production the size of The Jewel Of The Nile. Anything that could go wrong invariably did during the making of the sequel, including crew being tragically killed in a plane crash and the production racing against the clock under harsh filming conditions to make the release date. While it grossed a little less than Romancing The Stone, The Jewel Of The Nile was still a major success and even spawned a hit single in Billy Ocean's "When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going." Douglas, Turner and DeVito famously make cameo appearances in the video for the latter.
The Jewel Of The Nile may have been a hit but the conditions it was made under and its lukewarm reception meant plans for another movie never came together. While the trio of stars reunited for 1989's acidic dark comedy The War Of The Roses, scripts for different Romancing The Stone sequels like The Crimson Eagle - while involved Jack, Joan and their kids forced to steal the titular item - or Racing The Monsoon eventually died quiet deaths. There was also talk of a Romancing The Stone remake around 2010 with Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler (Olympus Has Fallen) mooted for the lead roles. A seeming lack of interest from both the stars and viewers for a third outing following The Jewel Of The Nile stalled what could have been a fun series.
