The success of Tom Cruise-starrer Top Gun: Maverick has been a shot in the arm for Hollywood star Reese Witherspoon who says she is now optimistic about making a third part of the Legally Blonde movie series.
During a recent interview with USA Today, Witherspoon talked about the much-awaited third movie, saying she is hopeful that the film will still happen.
“I’m still hoping that Legally Blonde 3 is going to come together in the right way. It’s just like Top Gun. They waited a long time to make another version of that movie, and I loved the nostalgia piece they incorporated in it,” she said.
“So definitely that gave us a lot of inspiration about what we would want to do with Elle Woods and make sure that we had all those same touchstones that mattered to people (back) then,” the 46-year-old added.
Top Gun: Maverick, which was released in theatres worldwide in May, was a sequel to the 1986 blockbuster of the same name and brought Cruise back in the iconic role of Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell.
The sequel released 36 years after the first movie was well received globally. Directed by Joseph Kosinski, the film has become the highest-grossing film of Cruise’s career, surpassing the box office collections of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and amassing over $1.3 billion at the global box office.
Legally Blonde 3 was greenlit by Hollywood studio MGM in 2018 but the project has been languishing since then.
The franchise started with 2001’s Legally Blonde, featuring Witherspoon as the idealistic Elle Woods who follows her boyfriend to a law school in order to win him back but ends up becoming a more successful lawyer than him.
It was followed by a sequel, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, which was released in 2003. Elle took on the politicians in Washington DC to get an animal rights bill passed in the film. The sequel ended with Elle hinting that she wanted to run for President, which could be the plot for the long overdue third part to follow.
“I feel like these characters are my friends, so I safeguard them. I would never make the subpar, mediocre version of their story,” Witherspoon said.
