Studios will continue to churn our sequels and franchises as long as moviegoers keep going to the theaters for them. After all, according to Box Office Mojo, the seven highest-grossing films of 2011 so far were all direct sequels. If you count remakes/reboots and “Marvel Universe” films (that’s a franchise, isn’t it?), the top ten highest-grossing films of 2011 were ALL franchise (thanks for breaking the streak goes to The Help!)
So we have a number of sequels to report on in various stages of production thanks to Slash Film. Some are completely expected and are set in stone. Others are bit more tentative.
First up, any chance of a third Crank film, following the previous two installments of Jason Statham action insanity? Mark Neveldine, part of the Neveldine/Taylor team that directed the previous two films. Neveldine say’s they’re trying to pare down the “50 ideas we what to do for Crank 3,” then adds, “By the way, Crank 3 is going to happen, the studios are really excited about it – it’s just all about timing.” Wonder if Statham, who has gained quite a bit of fame in the two years since the last Crank, is still up for it, too?
Something more concrete though is a sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which is definitely happening after the critical and box office success of this summer’s Apes film. Director Rupert Wyatt isn’t even shy about sharing his ideas for the sequel in the commentary for the just-released DVD, explaining, “We definitely needed to just lay the groundwork for how we’re going to level the playing field for the next part of the story which is the real conflict between humans and apes on a far bigger scale. Where we start that story remains to be seen but my guess is it will be a generation after. In human years that’s eight years for a chimpanzee or any ape, actually… we’re setting up, perhaps, why humanity is going to be vulnerable enough for this ever growing army of intelligent apes and their offspring to be able to take us on.”
Next? Disney has said its not looking to do anymore Pixar sequels after the upcoming Monsters University, but Brad Bird, who directed the Incredibles and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol has other ideas. On the Incredibles 2 front, Bird says he definitely has thought about making a sequel, saying, “I haven’t gotten it all figured out yet. I have a lot of ideas I had originally intended to be in the first movie, but you have to start throwing things out of the balloon to get it up in the air. A lot of the things you throw out are really cool and would be good in a movie, so… some of the things that I would want to do were originally intended for Incredibles, and there wasn’t the space to get them in there.”
Finally we’ll end with a Guy Richie double shot. I thought it was curious that Richie’s 2008 film RocknRolla — his last British crime film before launching into his Sherlock Holmes films — ended with a promise of a sequel in the credits. Nonetheless, Richie hasn’t spoken much about the sequel until now, saying, “I’ve written a script, I think it’s a great script, and Joel [Silver] wants to pay for me to do it. But up until now we haven’t had the time to do it. It’s sitting there and we’d all like to do it, it’s just a question of when we’re going to fit it in. So we’ll wait and see.”
Richie’s been a busy man with both Sherlock Holmes films and other offers pouring in… but what about another Sherlock Holmes? Robert Downey, Jr. and producers Lionel Wigram and Joel Silver all have the same answer: it all depends if Sherlock 2 performs well. Well, that makes sense.
So there you have it:
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