"Towering Inferno 2"?

I heard a rumor about this too, but I think the idea at least would have been more on the order of a simpler "McQueen fights a big fire somewhere else" which admittedly isn't much of a stretch since that is what McQueen's character does for a living. It wouldn't have had to have had Newman or Holden necessarily.

The Towering Inferno 2: The Wrath Of Carlos; The Glass Tower has now been heavily boarded up and presumed empty for six years now. The bartender Carlos was left for dead after a statue fell on him but he survived as a scavenger in the abandoned Glass Tower, he eventually found a number of other survivors, of which he became the leader. In the end there were 29 survivors including Carlos which he views as a providential sign because the cart of wine Duncan told him not to tie himself to was of 1929 vintage, so like the wine he calls his clan "The 29's". Most of the 29's are deformed either from being burned or some other injury, in Carlos' case he has a collapsed rib cage and partial collapsed lung from the statue falling on him resulting in a cough (think General Grevious in Star Wars Episode III). Carlos is now a madman out to seek revenge against Duncan who built the building. Carlos uses the Promenade Room as his command center with his command chair sitting on the ruins of his old bar.

Duncan after six years of lawsuits and resilience finally has an ambitious if not foolhardy plan to extensively remodel the cursed Glass Tower and re-brand it as "Genesis Tower". So Duncan sends in a construction team that mysteriously disappears, in reality Carlos found the crew, killed a few and took the rest hostage. Duncan and his staff enters the building to investigate only to have most of his staff killed by drone guns in the lobby of the building, Duncan lives and a security monitor comes on and he recognizes who it is. Duncan says "Carlos!" Carlos responds "You still remember me Duncan, I cannot help but be touched, I of course remember you".

At one point Carlos traps Duncan in the basement and via intercom tells him that the basement is set to very slowly cave in over a few hours and crush him. Duncan challenges Carlos to come down there and kill him himself. Carlos responds: "I've done far worse than kill you. I've hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left us, The 29's; crushed for all eternity under the coldness of hard concrete at the center of a dead skyscraper... buried alive! Buried alive...! Duncan: CARLOS!!!!!!! For the sake of poetic justice lets say Duncan does die from being crushed in reversal of what happened to Kirk in Star Trek II.

The Steve McQueen and Paul Newman characters have become good friends since the last movie akin to how Spock and Kirk are friends in Star Trek. They both plan a rescue operation for the surviving hostages in the tower, it ends up being a dog fight. Carlos has the entire tower booby trapped with things like flame throwers and trap doors that lead to elevator shafts that make people fall to their deaths.
They eventually force Carlos and the remaining 29's to confine themselves in the promenade room, faced with a swat team about to climb to the top of the tower and take them out Carlos enacts his final desperate plan by programming the building to be imploded from explosives he planted for such a scenario. The finale is the Steve McQueen character sacrificing himself heroically to save everyone as the Paul Newman character looks on, his action allows people to get far enough away from the building as Carlos implodes the building in a suicidal act of vengeance, the Glass Tower is no more. The film ends with Steve McQueen's character's casket being buried with full San Francisco Fire Department honors, the camera pans up over the San Francisco skyline with numerous standing skyscrapers in view as well as the smoking pile of debris that was The Towering Inferno with his haunting voice in the background repeating his lines from the end of the last movie "One day, you’re going to kill thousands in one of these, unless someone asks us how to build them."

Interestingly enough the view out the window from the Promenade Room in The Towering Inferno was reused for the view from Admiral Kirk's apartment in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan as well as for Star Trek III: The Search For Spock.

"...we're lucky Allen never got the chance to mar the memory of his best film with what would surely have been a crummy, badly written, poorly directed, thoroughly implausible and utterly unnecessary sequel."

Absoultetly right. McQueen was offered a script called "Towering Inferno 2" in 1976, but he was semi-retired and turned it down. I read somewhere the script was a preliminary version when McQueen got it, but he had no interest and without a guarantee of his involvement the project stalled (not sure if Paul Newman was ever approached). It probably would have been just like you said: Duncan builds a bigger, better tower that's supposed to be fireproof, but, it too catches on fire, and even more people are killed than in the first film.



"Life is a scam" - Steve McQueen

imagine Die Hard made a decade earlier (1978) as TTI2 with McQueen as the Fire Chief O'Hallorhan visiting his new wife (Faye Dunaway) at her new building on Christmas eve..(the building of course is the same Towering Inferno building that has been repaired/restored/improved)

OJ could've also returned to play the Al role (his TI character is now a cop) and William Holden would be back (maybe in something similar to the Takagi role), and Paul Newman back in a supporting role (sorry Paul!). with James Franciscus as Ellis, Erent Borgnine as Thornberg, and Michael Caine as Hans Gruber.

title - The Towering Hijack

hey its not as crazy as it seems ..from TTI imdb trivia:

After seeing this film, novelist Roderick Thorp had a dream that same night about a man being chased through a skyscraper by gun-wielding assailants. This was the inspiration for his 1979 book "Nothing Lasts Forever" which eventually was made into the film "Die Hard."