Just yesterday, it was announced that 20th Century Fox had locked in an October 2012 release date for Taken 2 across the pond. Now we have an idea of who will be playing the film’s big bad – that would be Rade Sherbedgia – and what he’ll be up to in the film.
The follow-up to the surprise thriller hit will see the fallout from the first film hit Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) and his family hard. See, it just so happens that one of the kidnappers killed by Mills when he was tracking down daughter Maggie Grace has a dad himself. And he’s no ordinary proud papa – he’s Murad (Sherbedgia), a nasty sort who decides to take a little revenge. So he kidnaps Mills and his wife (Famke Janssen) and this time it’s Grace who has to find a way to be the hero. Though we’re pretty sure that Mills and his skills will once more come into play, since we doubt Neeson would have signed on if he was only going to sit tied to a chair for most of the running time.
Olivier Megaton is taking over megaphone duties from Pierre Morel this time, and he’ll start directing later this month in Turkey and France. There’s no word on exactly when we’ll see the film over here, but we wouldn’t anticipate much of a delay after the US release. Bit of a change from the original, which we got months ahead of the US (where **Taken **was, of course, a sleeper hit), but if that's the price to pay to see Bryan Mills run through his CV again, we'll take it.