Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy is one of the best comic book films ever made. But even I have no need for Dick Tracy 2.

Warren Beatty set tongues wagging last night with offhand comments regarding the oft-promised Dick Tracy 2.  After speaking on the subject at an LA Times Hero Complex Film Festival screening of the original 1990 Dick Tracy, the various film sites were treating the off-the-cuff discussion as if the film were already green-lit.  It's not, and it probably never will be.  Warren Beatty has been threatening to make a sequel to his much-debated comic book adaptation ever since the original film became the world's first $100 million-grossing box office disappointment in the summer of 1990.  As you may recall, the Disney film cost around $50 million and was expected to be the PG-rated, Mouse-House answer to Batman.  But the film opened to $21 million (less than R-rated films from that summer such as Total Recall and Die Hard 2) and limped to $100 million.  It became the vocal point for Jeffrey Katzenberg's famous 'expensive and mindless movies are going to kill Hollywood' memo that rocked the industry in 1990 and is all the more relevant today.  It is ironic that the film that once stood as an example of Hollywood's excess remains a finely-aged comic book adventure that plays today more like a bitter and dark adult drama that happens to be shot in primary colors.