Why Josh Brolin has ‘trepidation’ about ‘The Goonies 2’

Josh Brolin has mixed feelings about making a sequel to The Goonies.

The actor recently explained why he’s hesitant to follow up the 1985 adventure classic, in which he starred as a teen, with a new chapter.

“I hope it does [happen] because the experience was so great,” he told Entertainment Tonight at the premiere of his new film, Weapons, this week. “The movie is received so well, generation after generation. It’s just everything good about it. The trepidation that I have is that you release something else that taints that. I don’t want to taint what my memory of it [is].”

Brolin then spitballed about what The Goonies 2 might look like with central cast as adults. “It’s like, ‘Oh, we came out with another,’ and then the Goonies grew up, and then they came out with their walkers and then they fell off a cliff because they couldn’t see very well,” he joked. “What are you going to do? I don’t know.”

However, Brolin acknowledged that The Goonies 2 could work if it had the full blessing of the film’s original producer and co-writer, Steven Spielberg. “Maybe it could be great. If it’s great, you’ll know,” he said. “If Spielberg approves it, you know it’s going to be good.”

But Brolin added that a number of Goonies follow-up screenplays have hit Spielberg’s desk in the four decades since the first movie, and, from his recollection, none have met his standards. “I think there’s been five scripts so far through the years and he hasn’t approved anything yet,” the actor explained. “Spielberg is picky, and he has a reason to be because he has great taste.”

In the original Goonies, Brolin portrayed Brandon Walsh, the big brother to Sean Astin’s young Mikey, who reluctantly accompanies his brother’s gaggle of buddies (played by Ke Huy Quan, Corey Feldman, and Jeff Cohen) on their quest to find the treasure of the pirate One-Eyed Willy.

At a virtual cast and crew reunion in 2020, Spielberg confirmed that numerous sequel concepts have been floated, but they just haven’t been up to snuff. “Every couple of years, we come up with an idea, but then it doesn’t hold water,” he said. “The problem is the bar that all of you raised on this genre. I don’t think we’ve really successfully been able to find an idea that is better than The Goonies that we all made in the ’80s.”

However, in February, Entertainment Weekly confirmed that The Goonies 2 is in the works at Warner Bros., and that Spielberg is among its producers, along with his Amblin colleagues Kristie Macosko Krieger and Holly Bario, as well as the original film’s writer, Chris Columbus. Potsy Ponciroli (Old Henry, Still the King) is writing the screenplay for the sequel. 

Shortly before the sequel’s announcement, Brolin reunited with Cohen, Feldman, Columbus, and Kerri Green to support Quan at his hand-and-footprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles.

Casting for The Goonies 2 has not yet been announced, but at least three cast members are game to reprise their roles. After winning the award for Best Supporting Actor for Everything Everywhere All at Once in January 2023, Quan told journalists in the Golden Globes press room that he would be open to reprising his character, Data, if given the chance.

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Additionally, Astin shared a fake poster for a Goonies sequel in 2024, suggesting that he was interested in revisiting the franchise. “It’s our time,” the Lord of the Rings star wrote in his caption.

And Robert Davi, who played the villainous Jake Fratelli in the first film, said he wants to join the sequel but is “concerned” that his outspoken support of President Trump may cost him the opportunity. “I do hope I’m part of it,” he said of the sequel in an interview with Fox Digital. “I hope that they don’t hold my politics against me and keep me from that project.”