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‘Grease’ Prequel Under Fire: ‘No’ Is The Word For Fans Of John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John’s Original Film

By Victoria Miller
Published on: 09:25 PST, Apr 10, 2019

Grease will soon get a prequel, but fans aren’t “loving” the premise. As previously shared by The Inquisitr, a new big screen movie, titled Summer Loving, will give the backstory on Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsson’s “summer nights” at the beach before they unexpectedly reunited on the first day of school at Rydell High in the 1950s-set film. The Grease prequel movie will reveal all of the details about the summertime romance between the characters originally played by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in Paramount’s 1978 musical.

Unfortunately, fans don’t have chills that are multiplying when thinking about the premise of the prequel, which will be penned by Aladdin screenwriter John August. That’s because Sandy and Danny’s pre-Rydell relationship is pretty much summed up in the famous Grease number “Summer Nights,” so there isn’t a whole lot of story to tell.

After news of the Grease prequel was announced, fans of the original film flocked to social media to protest the idea. Many Grease fans noted that there is already an entire song that explains Danny and Sandy’s summer lovin’. Others compared the Grease prequel idea to the panned Grease 2 sequel that starred Maxwell Caulfield and a little known Michelle Pfeiffer in 1982.

Of course, the upcoming prequel movie could shed some light on a long-running fan theory. According to USA Today, a morbid Grease fan theory — that Sandy drowned while running on the beach with Danny at the start of the movie and the entire story is her coma fantasy — went viral a few years ago. Some fans believe that John Travolta’s line in the song “Summer Nights”—”I saved her life, she nearly drowned”— is a clue that the convertible flying into the clouds at the end of the film signifies Sandy dying.

But Travolta told USA Today that his character was just bragging to impress his friends with his hero story. The Grease star pointed out that Sandy and Danny had two different stories as they recounted their first meeting to their friends in the song “Summer Nights” and that “somebody is lying. Most likely, it’s Danny.”

John Travolta and Olivia-Newton John recorded several duets for Grease. In addition to “Summer Nights,” the duo performed “You’re the One That I Want” and “We go Together.” Several of the Grease soundtrack songs became radio hits, making Grease: The Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture one of the bestselling movie soundtrack albums of all time.

You can see Danny and Sandy’s early relationship summed up in the “Summer Nights” video from the original Grease film below.

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