National Lampoon's Vacation - Sequels

Sequels

National Lampoon's Vacation spawned a number of sequels:

• National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985)
• National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)
• Vegas Vacation (1997)
• National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure (2003)
• Hotel Hell Vacation (2010)
• New Vacation (2013)

With the exception of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure, each sequel saw Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo reprise their roles as Clark and Ellen Griswold, enduring their unique and unenviable brand of vacation misadventure in various locales. However, the children Rusty and Audrey are played by a different set of actors in each film (except for Audrey in the last sequel). This fact is joked about early in Vegas Vacation: when we first see the kids again, Clark tells them that he "hardly recognizes" them anymore. The various actors were Anthony Michael Hall and Dana Barron in Vacation, Jason Lively and Dana Hill in European Vacation, Johnny Galecki and Juliette Lewis in Christmas Vacation, and Ethan Embry and Marisol Nichols in Vegas Vacation. Dana Barron again plays Audrey in Christmas Vacation 2, but Rusty, like his parents, could not make it for Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure, an NBC TV movie. However, Miriam Flynn and Randy Quaid reprise their roles as cousins Catherine and Eddie, as they did in each film aside from European Vacation. Christie Brinkley reprised her role as The girl in the red Ferrari in the 1997 sequel Vegas Vacation and later spoofed it in a 2008 DirecTV commercial interspliced with footage from Vacation, recreating the famous swimming pool scene.

Each sequel also manages to reference Walley World in some way.

In July 2012, it was announced that Ed Helms would star as Rusty Griswold in the upcoming film, New Vacation. The new version of the vacation adventures will follow Rusty, who now has his own family misadventures on the road. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein will write and direct the film. It is currently unknown if Chevy Chase or Beverly D'Angelo will reprise their roles in the new film or if any of the other cast members from past films will appear.