Earlier this month, we learned that last year's biting, thrilling cartel battling drama Sicario was generating a sequel, this time targeting Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin's characters. According to Stefano Sollima, the man making that film, Soldado, there are plans afoot for a third.
Don't go expecting the return of Emily Blunt's Kate Mercer, however – with the film's focus shifting to Brolin's CIA officer Matt Graves and Del Toro's hitman Alejandro Gillick, the narrative will be different, though writer Taylor Sheridan is once again on script duty. "It's not a real sequel," he tells the paper. "It's absolutely a standalone movie – a completely different story with just two of the characters that you met in Sicario. The reason that I love Soldado is because it's not exactly a sequel; it's something you can catch and enjoy even if you haven't watched the first one."
And the style will change too, according to Sollima. "I loved Sicario," he says. "I feel the movie was quite similar to my approach so, to me, I'm just shooting another movie. Soldado will be much more cinematic than Sicario was; it's got an incredible amount of huge action sequences in there. It will be a different journey in the same world. Even the theme is different – it's not drug dealing, it's more on immigration." And
As for the third film, it's still early days, but don't expect it to directly follow Soldado. "The idea is to make three anthology movies with some of the core actors and set in the same world." For more from Sollima, head to The Independent. The director's latest, Suburra, arrives in the UK on June 24.