Jennifer Lopez has blessed us by starring in a plentiful stash of romantic comedies and dramas. From Maid in Manhattan to Jersey Girl, she’s up there with Katherine Heigl and Julia Roberts as a queen of the genre.
But upon learning that there was an entire franchise worth of plot planned for the 2001 classic The Wedding Planner that never came to be, no amount of Monster-in-Law or Shall We Dance? can soothe this pain.
The Wedding Planner was a romantic comedy masterpiece starring JLo and Matthew McConaughey that had everything from forbidden love to slow dancing.
If you want to brush up, this trailer is quite literally the entire plot of the movie, beginning to end. It is The Wedding Planner condensed into a minute and a half.
Obviously, because it’s a 2001 romcom, JLo and McConaughey end up together. That’s where the story ends, but it turns out there was a plot for a sequel, threequel, and a TV series planned out for The Wedding Planner.
Screenwriter Michael Ellis spilled all the details of the Wedding Planner sequels that never were to Entertainment Weekly, and we’ll just have to use our imaginations to bring those films to life.
The sequel would pick up with Mary (JLo), focusing her wedding planning skills to her own nuptials with Steve (McConaughey), with the help of her best friend Penny (Judy Greer).
“She’d become a bridezilla,” and it would “destroy” her friendship with Penny, Ellis told EW.
While the Mary we know from the original film wanted a chill, seaside wedding, that idea apparently would have transformed as she got caught up and carried away in the excitement of her own wedding.
“When it came to her own wedding she’d be like, I want my big day,” Ellis explains. “When we were doing the research for the movie, all the wedding planners we interviewed were pretty cynical about the brides they were working for; When it comes to this is going to be my wedding, they just went crazy”
“When Mary gets to have her own big day, [she doesn’t] want it to just be on a beach, she wants her day in the spotlight. The drama of it is she’s become exactly the kind of thing she hated, and she takes a step back and figures out what’s important to her.” He said.
The sequel also potentially would have seen Jennifer Lopez’s character fall unexpectedly pregnant while planning the wedding.
“Which would lead to the third movie: Mary planning her daughter’s wedding!” Ellis explained.
The only thing that is low-key devastating is that by the time the third movie’s timeline begins, Mary and Steve would have apparently separated. But the act of planning their daughter’s wedding together would be used to bring them back together.
“The idea of what she’d want for her daughter and what her daughter wants would come into play,” Ellis said. “And whatever her journey was in the second movie, in the third movie she’d learn a lesson and try to teach her daughter what she’s learned and probably try to talk her out of the grand spectacle of it all because it doesn’t mean anything. What’s important is the person you’re going to be with, and she’d try to teach her daughter that lesson.”
On top of the films, there was a vision for the Wedding Planner TV show, and ABC even bought the pilot. The show would see Mary facilitate a new wedding every episode, and she would be back on the market after splitting with Steve.
“[But] Steve came back at the end of season 1,” Ellis noted, “Like her version of [Sex and the City’s] Mr. Big.”
The ABC ended up passing on the TV show, and obviously the movies never came to fruition. But there’s no reason why, in the age of revivals and reboots, we couldn’t get The Wedding Planner franchise we deserve.