Dolly Parton Announces ‘9 to 5’ Sequel Plans Have Been Dropped, Teases New Collaboration With Co-Stars

Sad news, Dolly Parton fans! The country music icon has announced that the long-awaited 9 to 5 sequel plans, starring Parton along with former co-stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, has been dropped, due to issues with the new script. But while the news is disappointing, the 73-year-old hints there is a new collaboration in the works with her former co-stars.

“I don’t think we’re going to do the sequel,” Parton told Entertainment Tonight. “We never could get the script where it was enough different than the first one, and that one turned out so good.”

“We’re thinking we might do a completely different thing together, Jane, Lily and I,” she added. “We may do something different altogether, but I don’t think we’ll continue with [the sequel].”

Parton acknowledges that the three women wanted the sequel to work, but it was logistically a challenge.

“All these years we’ve talked about doing a sequel to 9 to 5, but it never made any real sense,” said the singer. “Until just recently [with] all the equal work for equal pay and all the harassment in the workplace [backlash] — we decided that we are going to try to do another one.”

Parton might be ready to walk away from a 9 to 5 sequel idea, but Tomlin might not be quite as ready. In a separate interview with Entertainment Tonight, Tomlin hinted that the idea wasn’t totally discarded.

“A script is being written and we’ll see,” Tomlin said. “You never know.”

Whether or not a 9 to 5 reboot ever sees the light of day, Parton is proud of the message in the movie, which was considered quite brazen when it was released in 1980.

“I think that brought so much stuff to the forefront that people had not been willing to look at, even though they knew it was happening,” Parton told Elle. “At that time, we really hoped that it would make a bigger difference than it actually did. Although I do feel like it did open a lot of doors and a lot of eyes to a lot of problems that we’d been having since time began.”

Parton, who previously said she would want Scarlett Johansson or Reese Witherspoon to play her if she ever did a biopic of her life, will premiere her Netflix web television series, Heartstrings, on Nov. 22.

Photo Credit: Getty / Tibrina Hobson