There are numerous reasons why director Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys sequel never actually happened. The original movie, an American teen horror flick released in 1987, was produced by Harvey Bernhard and written by Jeffrey Bram, with Janice Fischer and James Jeremias as the writers. The movie begins with Michael Emerson (Jason Patric) and his brother Sam (Corey Haim) traveling with their single mother Lucy (Dianne Wiest) to go live with her father (Barnard Hughes) in Santa Carla, California — a town that has a vampire problem.
Soon enough, Michael becomes fixated by a young woman named Star (Jami Gertz) and meets her apparent boyfriend, David (Kiefer Sutherland). Eventually, Michael is initiated into their group — he drinks from a bottle of blood and becomes a semi-vampire. With Sam's help, Michael tries to reverse what has happened to him, encountering obstacles along the way. This story has garnered its own cult fan base over the years since its release.
The success of the movie did end up spawning a franchise. A monthly comic books miniseries was produced in 2008, and a television adaptation of Lost Boys is reportedly being developed at The CW. A sequel called Lost Boys: The Tribe was released in 2008, and Lost Boys: The Thirst followed in 2010. The two movie sequels, though, were not directed by Schumacher; the first was directed by P. J. Pesce and the third installment was directed by Dario Piana. Schumacher attempted to make his own proper sequel before these two came out, but the project never ended up happening.
Schumacher first started trying to make his own sequel following the release of the 1987 movie, since it did so well at the box office and became extremely successful on VHS. Originally, the concept was dubbed The Lost Boys: The Beginning and was a prequel set in San Francisco in 1906, centering on how David and his group became vampires. Schumacher soon switched his idea and thought up The Lost Girls, which would star Drew Barrymore and Rosanna Arquette. While there was constant talk swirling around this idea, it never got made. This was probably due to the passage of time; without any further movements toward development or pre-production, Schumacher's career took off in a different direction and he never returned to The Lost Boys like he intended.
It's peculiar that Schumacher's sequel never came to fruition, meanwhile the straight-to-DVD 2008 and 2010 sequels - which were panned by critics and The Lost Boys fans alike - got the green light. The sequels that were released were unable to capture the aesthetic of the original movie. Plus, Schumacher noted that they're not true sequels, since they don't bring back any of the original movie's characters. Perhaps, though, it's better that Schumacher's movie was a standalone film. It has certainly paved the way for other teen-vampire media, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight. Hopefully, the upcoming TV adaptation, which is reportedly being reworked as of this writing, will pay homage to Schumacher's original vision or even take ideas from his attempted sequel.