Film producer Justine Henzell is not opposed to a sequel to her father’s iconic Jamaican film The Harder They Come, but noted that whoever is writing the script will have to “come good”.

Speaking at the 25th annual Bob Marley lecture organised by the Institue of Caribbean Studies at The University of the West Indies, Mona, Henzell noted that over the years her family has been approached by many persons pitching ideas for a sequel, prequel, remake to The Harder They Come.

“I walk that line of protecting the legacy but not being precious with the legacy. I am not averse. As I have said I love the fact that new work can be created from the original without any damage at all. So I will not say that no new iterations will happen… but dem haffi come good,” she noted.

Henzell added that part of the issue has to do with scripts and the fact that Jamaicans are not making the move to take our own stories to the screen. She added thatnks to the work of the Jamaica Film and Television Association (JAFTA) and its partners there have been a number of script-to-screen labs which takes film-makers through every step of the process.

“There are lots of stories. We need to move our stories from just being stories to being scripts, and that is very challenging. It sounds like a short jump but it’s not, it’s actually a huge Grand Canyon leap, and we have to do the work to make sure that we turn our stories into scripts. I do believe that that is happening and we have the filmmakers who can then take it to the screen. Developmental work is something that JAFTA is focusing on primarily and it is where the focus needs to be.”

She further noted that there need to be a level of funding to support writers to take Jamaican stories from the page to the screen.

“Sadly, there isn’t a fund yet that can pay our writers to sit at home and write. Our people who want to write still must have a day job because there is nowhere that pays them to stay home and write so they can pay their electricity bill and I don’t think we understand that until our writers, our gamers, our animators are able to access funding to develop their projects that we’re not going to get the type of quality projects that we need to make that leap into a global market.”

Henzell’s father Perry Henzell wrote, produced and directed The Harder They Come which premiered at the Carib cinema in Kingston in 1972-50 years ago. The film, which chronicled the life of a country boy Ivan, played by reggae artiste Jimmy Cliff, who came to the city with the hope of becoming a recording artiste but meets on hard times and takes up a life of crime. Over the years the film has become a cult classic playing to audiences worldwide.