Cocoon: The Return

Cocoon: The Return continues the story of the elderly friends who left Earth with the alien Antareans at the end of the first film. Now living on the planet Antares, where they no longer age, Art Selwyn, Ben Luckett and their companions miss their families and decide to visit home. Their return coincides with a problem for their alien friends: a cocoon left behind on the ocean floor has been discovered by scientists, and it must be recovered before it falls into the wrong hands. The visit becomes a choice between the life they have found among the Antareans and the ties that still bind them to Earth.

The film is a science-fiction comedy directed by Daniel Petrie, whose filmography had begun with A Raisin in the Sun in 1961 and continued through such titles as Fort Apache, the Bronx in 1981. David Saperstein and Stephen McPherson wrote the screenplay, and Richard D. Zanuck, David Brown and Lili Fini Zanuck produced. Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn and Jack Gilford reprise their roles, with Courteney Cox and Steve Guttenberg also appearing among a credited cast of sixty.

Released in September 1988, the film had a budget of 18 million dollars and took about 25 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 5.4 from over 17,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.5 from roughly a thousand votes, and it received a critics' rating of 4.5 from thirteen reviews, indicating a mixed response.