REGGAE superstar Jimmy Cliff says a sequel to the 1972 Jamaican cult classic The Harder They Come is on the cards for later this year.

Cliff, 66, was speaking to the Jamaica Observer in an exclusive interview on the weekend.

“We don’t know what we’ll be calling it yet. But as with the first movie, we had called it Hard Road To Travel and somewhere along the way we called it The Harder They Come,” Cliff told the Observer.

“Right now, we’re calling it Many Rivers to Cross,” he continued.

According to the Grammy-winning artiste, production is slated to begin this winter and scenes will be shot in Britain and Jamaica.

Cliff said the storyline is being put together by an established Broadway writer in New York, but couldn’t remember his name.

“He is a scriptwriter, so he’s putting in a basic script form,” he said.

Directed by Perry Henzell and co-written by Trevor Rhone, the low-budget film The Harder They Come made its debut in Britain in 1972. It made its American run the following year and was shown in New York City, New England and California. The flick introduced Jamaican pop culture to a rock and college audience.

Cliff starred as Ivan, a youth from rural Jamaica who moves to Kingston in search of his big break as a singer. When that fails, he turns to a life of crime.

The film is based on Ivanhoe ‘Rhygin’ Martin, a criminal who terrorised sections of west Kingston in the late 1940s.

For the sequel, Cliff says he will reprise the character of Ivan.

“The Ivan character that I play had a child which he wasn’t aware of and the child was not aware that his father was a notorious outlaw. They kept that from the child who lived in London, while his father was in prison for about 40 years,” he said.

But didn’t Ivan die in a shootout with the security forces?

“You see him get shoot up, but you never see him bury,” Cliff added.