I HEARD THIS WAS GOING TO TRY TO BE ONE OF THOSE COMIC CAPERS WHERE THEY WOULD KEEP MAKING SEQUELS,BUT IT DIDN'T DO MUCH BUSINESS AFTER THE 2ND WEEK OF RELEASE,SO THE STUDIOS CHANGED THEIR MINDS.
shareI'm glad they didn't, would have ruined it.
shareActually, at the time of his death, Candy WAS planning on doing a sequel to Crumb. That would've been awesome!! Sadly, it can never happen now...
shareA sequel would have been cool; it could have picked up right where the first one left off with him in drag going to the "Bottoms Up" club in San Francisco to investigate the murder.
shareI agree! Love this movie! At least should have had one sequel! Too bad that John Candy died when it was on development!
Prostitute: What the *beep* are you doing?
Johnny: I'm gonna kill a bunch of people.
Question: Why was there never a direct sequel to the hit John Candy comedy "Who's Harry Crumb?" (1989) despite the film's tremendous critical and box-office success?share
Not sure where you are getting your numbers from questioner, but Harry Crumb woefully underperformed at the box office. It’s budget was roughly $7 million and it grossed less than $11 million USD. It was supposed to be John Candy’s biggest film of 1989; however it was beaten (quite handily, I might add) by the release of Uncle Buck later that year.
It was also supposed to be another attempt to make Shawnee Smith a star following the box office bomb that was the updated version of The Blob. Unfortunately for Smith, it took nearly a decade and some breast augmentation before she was finally able to score what remains her biggest successes so far: The CBS sitcom Becker and the Saw franchise of films.
Finally, John Candy’s star was rising in Hollywood in brief period of time preceding his premature death from a heart attack in 1993. It was unlikely that he was going to return to an underperforming film franchise, assuming that a sequel could have even been produced.