They’ll probably talk it out

Can we say enough about that crazy little Indonesian action franchise known as The Raid? Apparently not. With the recent premiere of The Raid 2: Berandal at the Sundance Film Festival (and subsequent positive reception) we come to the obvious Hollywood question: will there be a sequel? Well it certainly seems to be a strong possibility. Geoff Henao, writing for Ruby Hornet, was able to snag an interview with Gareth Evans, the Welsh writer and director of both Raid films (plus another Indonesia-set martial-arts pic, Merantau).

In the interview, Evans gives out some ideas he has about the potential Raid 3 – just ideas, mind you, as no level of production has started on a sequel yet.

From the interview:

It’s set three hours before The Raid 2 finishes, so there’s a key moment in The Raid 2 where we go back and revisit that scene, and as a result of that, we branch off. We go into a totally different direction. That’s as much as I can say right now. […] There are people involved in the second [film] that we expand a lot more on in the third… which is probably pretty obvious now because most of the f****** die in the second.

What that could mean for the franchise  will no doubt have fans speculating  for a while. Will it go the route of Jackie Chan’s Police Story series and produce a film in the canon with a different protagonist – as was the case with Once a Cop, aka Police Story IV, aka, Supercop 2? Will the next Raid film be a straight-up sequel or more of a spin-off? Whatever the answer, action fans should already be wetting their lips in anticipation.