On December 20, 2019, The Godfather Part II celebrates the 45th anniversary of its release in 1974. It still remains one of the most lauded cinematic sequels of all time, and the first sequel to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. (It took The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King 29 years to achieve the same feat).

Al Pacino as Michael Corleone

The Unexpected Sequel

Robert De Niro as Vito Corleone

Expanding the Godfather World

Actors Who Were Replaced During Production 16 IMAGES

Nervous Execs

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Back in the ’70s, sequels weren’t as ubiquitous as they are today, so for director Francis Ford Coppola to equal, and arguably best, The Godfather was, and remains to this day, a stunning achievement. To mark the anniversary, Fathom Events has scheduled screenings of The Godfather Part II in theaters across the country, including on November 12 and 13 (buy tickets here) . The film is presented as part of the TCM Big Screen Classics series.Fred Roos, a co-producer on The Godfather Part II who also walked away with an Academy Award for the movie, is still a frequent collaborator of Coppola’s and the extended family of Coppola filmmakers. Now 85, Roos got on the phone to talk with IGN about how Part II was the unexpected sequel in Coppola’s career, with Paramount Pictures talking the director and his team into another installment because The Godfather was such a massive success for the studio, and more.Roos says Coppola only agreed to the sequel after he found a way into it story-wise. “Great artists don't usually do sequels to their own films,” the producer says of the general mind-set back in the day. “It was kind of a no-no. Not a classy thing to do.”But Coppola was aware of the great power he was going to be afforded in doing a follow-up, so he worked with The Godfather novelist Mario Puzo to outline a script that would be worthy enough to tell.“He and Mario, they had this way of working where they would go off to a hotel, usually in Reno or somewhere where there's gambling,” Roos reveals. “They would work for two or three hours in a room on the script. And then they would go down and gamble for a couple of hours. They would give themselves a little prize. A little ‘dessert’ for their hard work.”The fruits of their labor became the screenplay that told the story of Vito Corleone’s youth in Sicily, which would be portrayed with Robert De Niro in the role, as juxtaposed with the continuing tale of his son, contemporary mobster Michael Corleone, again played by Al Pacino. The Godfather: Part II was, in a general sense, on the page in the script, but not exactly,” Roos explains. “When you crossed from one story to the other, that had to be tried over and over in different cuts and different screenings for audiences. It took months to finally arrive at the right formula of how to do the cutting. It wasn't just automatically there in the script, although the two stories were.”In his role as a producer, Roos integrated his skills as a successful casting agent into his daily responsibilities, expanding on the cast of surviving characters from the first film. “Putting together that cast was pivotal, but in back of the camera, we also tried to keep the same group of people who made the first one,” Roos details. “The cinematographer, production designers, and many other people. And there are always new people that I’d have to plug in. But it wasn't hard to get a cast for Godfather: Part II. It was hard to choose correctly.”In truth, some of his trickiest producer fixes came with two prevalent roles slated for Part II: Marlo Brando’s Don Corleone and Richard Castellano who played Peter Clemenza.Brando ended up having demands on the script and for his schedule that just ended up being untenable. Roos says as a result, very early on, “Francis and Mario arrived at a way to give [Don] a presence, but we don't see him.”“Richard Castellano kind of got delusions of grandeur after the first film,” Roos continues. “He made incredible demands to be in Part II. He wanted to have input on the script. So that's when the Frankie Pentangeli, Frankie Five Angels, character was created. In effect, he replaces the Clemenza character. I mean, not actually, but that's how that [swap with Frankie actor Michael Gazzo] came about.”Otherwise, Roos also made himself available to help Coppola just focus on the intense demands of the production. “That film was shot all over the world,” the producer explains. “We shot in Hollywood, the Dominican Republic, Miami, Sicily, Rome, Lake Tahoe and a big part of it in New York City with streets [that] had to be built from scratch by production design. You weren't continuously shooting because you would pull up and have to move to another location, but that's a long, long time for a shoot.”The wide array of locations also made Paramount execs slightly nervous asking Coppola and Roos if they truly had to travel to actual locations, or spend so much on production elements. “They would make their efforts, but when you’d say, ‘Back off,’ or ‘We're doing it this way,’ they would back off,” Roos says to their credit.“But I would have to take these phone calls from the execs saying, ‘You're two weeks behind schedule and you're two million over budget! Can't you stop this man? What is he doing?’” he continues. And I'd just have to deal with these phone calls and go on with the work at hand. And we didn't shut them out,” he says of Copolla’s inclusive ways. “They could come to the set if they wanted to fly to Sicily, or fly to the Dominican Republic. But usually they didn't,” he chuckles.When Part II hit theaters at the very end of 1974, Roos says the entire company was curious about how it would land with critics and audiences. “It was such a complex film, and a long film with a sophisticated structure,” he says. “And even when it opened and played, it got very good reviews, but it wasn't named one of the 10 best films of all time. That grew over the years.”Roos admits that even on the night of the Oscars, the whole town assumed Chinatown was going to win. They certainly were wrong as The Godfather Part II cleaned up with six Academy Award wins. “Where not every film that I take on, or have the chance to do, can quite come up to that level, you always hope it can,” he says.In the four decades since, Roos has remained a producing fixture in the credits for all of the Coppola filmmakers from Francis to Sofia and Eleanor. He’s also now working with his producer son. “He was a graduate of USC film school, so it's Roos and Roos,” he says with pride. “And that makes it fun. And we travel around the world making films. It's still exciting. And I’m not ready to walk away from it.”Celebrate The Godfather Part II’s 45th anniversary with Fathom Events’ screening in theaters across the U.S. on November 12 and 13. Buy tickets here!