Several years after news of a sequel first came to surface, “Showgirls 2” has – like Kyle MacLachlan in a free-flowing backyard pool – reportedly inched forward.

Filmmaker Marc Vorlander has been developing a sequel titled “Showgirls : Story of Hope” . Instead of fixing on Elizabeth Berkely’s water-wriggling Noni character it’ll be the story of Hope, played then -and now- by model/actress Rena Riffel.

JoBlo.com got the news from German website ExtraTipp, and ran the article text through a language translator. They managed to decipher that the story is “about [a] stripper who died from a dose of contaminated cocaine. Her brother comes to Frankfurt to find the responsible and revenge’’.

Riffel was quoted at one stage of saying, “Showgirls just keeps getting more and more popular, it’s a total phenomenon. I don’t think a film could even try to have this afterlife happen to it. This cult status and celebration is all created by the fans and the people who saw something special in the film. I seem to be one of the only actors that represents and gets involved with the cult status. I think Elizabeth (Berkley) is still upset about how the film was received initially. I think she is brilliant in her role and she should have won best actress at some film festivals, and I think Joe Eszterhas’s writing is remarkably brilliant. I suspect because the way they marketed the film, that is what led to the backlash. The marketing campaign was misleading. But at the end of the day, it all worked out for the best.”

Following her role as Penny/Hope in “Showgirls”, Riffel went on to star in another ‘randy-man’s flick’ “Striptease”.

Last year Producer Mario Kassar told Moviehole that plans for a direct-to-video sequel to “Showgirls”, originally announced in 2005, “never happened”. Assumingly, that meant it was dead.

“Showgirls 2″ was said to have a financial backer in Germany’s Lighthouse Films and producers in Brad Krevoy and Donald Kushner, but signatures never hit paper. But seems good ideas just won’t die…. Bad ones sometimes too.