All had been very quiet on the Wanted sequel front, but it looks as if Universal has unpacked the Loom of Fate and seen threads of hope emerging. Original screenwriters Michael Brandt and Derek Haas have been re-hired to start working on **Wanted 2.
Very loosely based on Mark Millar's comics, Wanted placed James McAvoy in a loony action spectacle where he was taught to bend bullet trajectories and flip cars in slow-motion by Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, apparently in pursuit of his father's killer. He later goes up against the mysterious Fraternity that initially took him in and honed his latent superpowers.
Some of the film's more out-there plot elements (that loom we mentioned, for example) met with snorts of derision from most quarters, but the film achieved a box office take north of $300m (on a budget of $75m), so a sequel was always on the cards. Jolie's lack of interest though (understandable given her characer's position at the end of the first film) seemed to stymie Universal, and the nascent franchise languished in development hell.
Until yesterday, when The Wrap got hold of Haas and got him to expand on his initial cursory tweetspilling the beans. "We just always loved the** Wanted** world, and loved working with Universal and Timur Bekmambetov," Haas says, "so we're excited! Wanted 2 is going to take off right after the events that just happened; it'll pick up Wesley a few years later and go back in for another round." A later Haas tweet confirmed that the script he and Brandt are developing is "Fox-less and loom-less". Definitely no Jolie then, but will McAvoy be back to reprise Wesley?
Strictly at the writing stage, there's not yet a green light or start date for the film, and Haas says that Bekmambetov is "a busy guy", so there's no director attached yet either. We'll keep you posted on further developments.
Be very impressed that we wrote this story without making any tortuous puns about the film's title. We really Wanted 2.