Repo Man 2 Isn’t Technically the First Repo Man Sequel
Your guide to the Repo World ahead of Repo Man 2: The Wages of Beer.
The worst repo man in Los Angeles is back. Sort of. Almost 40 years after its original debut, the 1984 cult classic Repo Man is finally getting a proper sequel from original writer-director Alex Cox. Variety reports that the movie, titled Repo Man 2: The Wages of Beer, is backed by Buffalo 8 Productions and stars Kiowa Gordon in the lead role of Otto (played by Emilio Esteves in the original). According to Variety, “The film picks up after Otto has boarded his trusty 1967 Chevy Malibu to journey across the infinities of time and space. In that time he has aged exactly 90 minutes.”
Inverse recently spoke to Alex Cox for an upcoming feature on Repo Man, and while he didn’t mention this sequel, he did discuss his previous attempts at continuing the story of Otto and Bud (Harry Dean Stanton). Cox originally planned to release a direct sequel titled Otto’s Hawaiian Holiday.
“It was a sequel that I had written in the 1990s to make on the 10th anniversary of Repo Man,” Cox says, confirming that Otto’s Hawaiian Holiday would have starred Esteves and Stanton along with the addition of Willem Dafoe. They even made a poster featuring the three actors to help sell the movie, which Repo Man producer Peter McCarthy took with him on a fundraising tour.
“Peter took it with him to Cannes or some big film market, trying to raise money,” Cox says.
The concept for Otto’s Hawaiin Holiday became a graphic novel in 2008.
The story ultimately became Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday, a graphic novel published in 2008, in which Otto returns to Earth in his 30s and gets a job as a telemarketer — only to learn that Los Angeles is actually a giant Martian prison.
Cox later produced a spiritual sequel to Repo Man called Repo Chick, which doesn’t share any characters or plotlines but takes place inside the world of the original film.
“Repo Chick isn't actually a sequel to Repo Man,” Cox says. “It’s a story in the Repo World, but it takes place not in the Los Angeles that we know, but as a model railroad layout. The characters are classic model railroad figures like seven or eight centimeters high. It's very like Barbie in terms of its visual aspect, or I should say Barbie is very like Repo Chick.”
It’s unclear how Repo Man 2 may connect to these other stories, but given the detail that Otto will have only aged “90 minutes” since the original movie’s ending, it seems likely that Cox plans to start fresh. In other words: Repo Man 2 sounds like a requel.
“It's very like Barbie in terms of its visual aspect, or I should say Barbie is very like Repo Chick.”
