'Forrest Gump' sequel that included Princess Diana, OJ Simpson's Bronco was scrapped after 9/11
FOX NEWS - "Forrest Gump" screenwriter, Eric Roth, revealed he planned to have Tom Hanks' character meet Princess Diana and ride in the back of O.J. Simpson's Bronco in the infamous 1994 car chase before the sequel was ultimately scrapped following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Roth told Yahoo Entertainment on Monday that the plot to the Oscar-winning film's sequelwould have centered on events in the 1990s, but the movie would've begun addressing the health of Forrest Junior, played by Haley Joel Osment. In the first movie, it was implied the boy's mother, Jenny, played by Robin Wright, died from HIV/AIDS.
"It was gonna start with his little boy having AIDS," Roth said. "And people wouldn't go to class with him in Florida. We had a funny sequence where they were [desegregation] busing in Florida at the same time, so people were angry about either the busing, or [their] kids having to go to school with the kid who had AIDS. So there was a big conflict."
Like the first film, Gump would be placed in real-life events.
"I had him in the back of O.J.'s [White Ford] Bronco," Roth said, referring to the 1994 police chase in Los Angeles. "[Gump] would look up occasionally, but they didn't see him in the rearview mirror, and then he'd pop down.