Grease prequel will let us see more of Sandy and Danny’s summer romance

Grease fans will finally see how Sandy and Danny met thanks to a prequel film in the works.

Grease fans, you are about to get a brand new movie in the series. We all remember Sandy and Danny singing about their “Summer Nights” together before heading off to Rydell High for senior year. But, if you have ever wondered exactly how they met and what those summer nights looked like, have no fear, as a new movie is about to give us the Grease prequel we never knew we wanted or needed.

According to Vanity Fair, the prequel will be written by John August, who also wrote the script for Big Fish. The title will be a play off of the song in which Sandy and Danny shared their romanticized version of their summer fling, Summer Loving.

Considering how beloved Grease is, it makes sense we’re getting a prequel. Not only do we have the classic film starring Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, we’ve also been treated to a sequel and a live-action musical, which starred Julianne Hough, Vanessa Hudgens, and Aaron Tveit. For those skeptical that a Grease prequel could deliver, consider the 2016 live-action musical was one of the most successful of any that have aired to date.

Obviously this news is so new that we have no clue as to who will star in the movie, who might direct the film, or even if there will be even more songs to fall in love with. On the one hand, I can’t imagine a movie in the Grease series not being a musical. However, it may not be necessary to make the prequel a musical.

When you think about how beloved the original movie is and how much controversy surrounded the musical before it delivered on many of its promises, it is hard to imagine the prequel being quite as well received by fans. It can be hard to recapture the magic of a truly successful film, no matter how hard a studio tries. And depending on what they end up doing with casting, the film could be made or broken before a single frame is filmed.

Honestly, we have to ask ourselves if we even want to see a prequel to Grease or perhaps the better question is if the idea of diving into how Sandy and Danny met is really the story we want. To say we don’t want a prequel at all would be too hasty. I mean, I wouldn’t mind a prequel where we learned more about the Greasers and the Pink Ladies, but that’s not what we are getting.

Hollywood is known for rehashing stories, giving us prequels and sequels to movies that we never really needed or wanted. So it makes sense that they have decided to give us a Grease prequel.

If this was happening in 1979 or 1980 when Travolta or Newton-John could embody the characters again, that would be different. But the reality is that whoever they get to play Sandy and Danny won’t be the people who originated the roles to begin with, and that is already a strike against the film.

Summer Loving is the prequel we never knew we needed and it still feels that way. But, we are going to hold out hope that the screenwriter and the studio are able to capture some lighting in a bottle once again and give us the Grease prequel we all deserve.