There's nothing surprising about most sequels these days — especially since they seem
to be a dime a dozen.
Thankfully, though, there are at least a handful of upcoming projects that nobody could have
seen coming.
These are some of the movie sequels you probably didn't know are happening.
Before Zack Snyder's bloody zombie heist film Army of the Dead had even premiered on Netflix
in 2021, the movie's producers were already looking ahead to the future of the franchise.
While the ending of the film didn't seem to leave a lot of room for sequels, the opening
sequences suggested plenty of potential backstory to mine — and that's exactly what Netflix
is planning.
In addition to an anime series tracing the early days of the zombie outbreak, titled
Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, the 2021 film will also receive a prequel feature centered
around its expert safe-cracker, Ludwig Dieter.
Titled Army of Thieves, the prequel will be directed by Matthias Schweighöfer, who will
also star as the scene-stealing criminal.
The film will be set just as the zombies are first spreading across Las Vegas, an event
shown only as a quick, epic montage at the beginning of Army of the Dead.
According to Snyder, it will primarily tell the story of how Dieter's safe-cracking career
came to be.
Like Army of the Dead, Army of Thieves will also feature an ensemble cast, although Schweighöfer
will be the only carryover from the first film.
Joining him for the prequel will be Nathalie Emmanuel, Guz Khan, Ruby O. Fee, and Stuart
Martin.
While Netflix hasn't yet given the film a precise premiere date, it's set to hit the
streamer sometime in 2021.
Long before John Boyega was fighting the First Order in Star Wars, he was fighting far more
monstrous aliens in the urban sci-fi adventure Attack the Block.
Written and directed by Joe Cornish, the 2011 film starred Boyega as Moses, the leader of
a South London street gang that decides to rid their neighborhood of vicious extraterrestrial
invaders.
"No feds."
"You'd be better off calling the Ghostbusters, love."
The sequel will reunite Boyega and Cornish, the latter of whom is once again both writing
and directing.
This time, Boyega will also be acting as co-producer, in addition to reprising his role as Moses.
Speaking to Deadline, Boyega said:
"It's been a decade since Attack the Block was released, and so much has changed since
then.
I'm excited to see this heightened story return to the streets of London.
Moses has remained one of my favorite characters to play and bringing him back is a huge honor."
Cornish echoed his collaborator's enthusiasm, saying:
"I'm thrilled we're officially announcing our return to the world of Attack the Block
on the tenth anniversary of the film's release.
I can't wait to work alongside John again, bringing audiences an even bigger slice of
inner-city alien action."
Although the Stephen King novel Pet Sematary has a pretty conclusive ending, the same cannot
be said for the 2019 film adaptation, which reimagined the story in a much more open-ended
fashion.
So it makes sense that Pet Sematary 2 is now in the works from Paramount, which will be
helmed by Chaos Walking scribe Lindsey Beer in her directing debut.
The film is set to skip theaters, debuting exclusively on the Paramount+ streaming service.
The 2019 remake of the 1989 original starred Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz as parents who
discover a small cemetery near their new house.
After their cat is hit by a car and killed, they bury him in the cemetery, only for him
to come back to life.
Of course, everything goes downhill from there, and, in typical Stephen King fashion, things
get pretty disturbing pretty quickly.
Plot details for the sequel are unknown, but given the ending of the first film, it seems
almost certain that it will feature a new cast — with the only returning character
being the Pet Sematary itself.
Ahead of the release of Spiral: From the Book of Saw, the ninth installment in the "Saw"
horror franchise, star Chris Rock was already campaigning for a sequel.
Speaking to RadioTimes.com, Rock said:
"I hope this movie is like Creed.
In the sense that Creed is technically like Rocky 7.
So, hopefully there's more Spirals, and hopefully, I'm in more Spirals.
[...] We'll see if people like it.
We'll see if people turn out."
Luckily, people have indeed turned out, with Spiral pushing the horror franchise over the
$1 billion mark at the global box office.
By itself, the numbers for Spiral haven't been particularly impressive, although it
hasn't been a disastrous showing by any measure — especially considering that it was released
in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As such, it was reported ahead of the movie's release that Lionsgate was actively developing
a tenth Saw film, although this hasn't yet been confirmed by the studio.
And although Spiral director Darren Lynn Bousman has warned fans not to get ahead of themselves,
he has admitted that a sequel isn't out of the question.
He told RadioTimes.com:
"I think that [...] if Spiral is successful, they'll continue it on.
But if this has to be successful, fans have to embrace what this is.
And if they do embrace it, I think they'll continue on as they have in the past."
The game is afoot — again!
After the smash success of 2020's Enola Holmes, Netflix's detective caper starring Millie
Bobby Brown as the younger sister of Sherlock Holmes, the streamer has greenlit a sequel.
Based on a series of novels by Nancy Springer, the first film saw the teenage Enola running
away from home to investigate her mother's mysterious disappearance, against the explicit
instructions of her older brother, Mycroft, who steps in as her guardian.
During her journey, she befriends the Viscount Tewkesbury, a young runaway who's been targeted
for assassination.
Of course, by the end of the film, Enola has solved both mysteries, as well as earned the
respect of her famous detective sibling.
While the plot of the sequel isn't yet known, it will undoubtedly see Enola taking on another
case, although whether she and Sherlock will work together this time remains to be seen.
Brown and Henry Cavill will both reprise their roles for the sequel, which will also bring
back the original's director, Harry Bradbeer.
At Disney's 2020 Investor Day event, the studio reaffirmed that a fifth installment in the
iconic Indiana Jones franchise is on the way, once again starring Harrison Ford.
"It's not the years, honey.
It's the mileage."
At 78 years old, Ford will likely be retiring his trademark whip and fedora by the end of
Indiana Jones 5, although the studio hasn't yet indicated whether the film will see him
pass the baton to a younger generation — or close out the franchise for good.
However, we do know he'll be joined in his adventure by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, of Fleabag
fame, and Hannibal's Mads Mikkelsen, along with Boyd Holbrook and Shaunette Renée Wilson.
And they'll be accompanied by the score of John Williams, who's also returning for Indy's
newest adventure.
In the director's chair for Indy 5 is James Mangold, who has already proved that he is
perfectly capable of bringing the legacy of a beloved action hero to a dignified end.
Mangold previously directed 2017's Logan, which served as the final adventure for Hugh
Jackman's Wolverine and Patrick Stewart's Charles Xavier.
Logan earned Mangold an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and served as
a thrilling and satisfying conclusion for Jackman and Stewart's characters.
While Indiana Jones 5 isn't likely to skew nearly as dark as Logan, we can only hope
that it will offer up a suitably moving farewell to one of cinema's great action icons.
The movie hits theaters on July 29th, 2022.
After six successful installments in the found-footage horror franchise, Paranormal Activity is coming
back with a seventh film, which will once again partner Paramount Studios with horror
mega-producer Jason Blum.
The film will be helmed by Underwater director Will Eubank from a script by Christopher Landon,
and after a little shuffling due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the decision was made to skip theaters
and release the film directly onto Paramount+.
While no plot details have yet been released, we can take some guesses as to where the movie
is headed.
After the first Paranormal Activity focused on newlyweds Katie and Micah, every subsequent
installment has tied back to Katie and her family in one way or another.
In particular, the Paranormal Activity sequels most frequently focus on new characters that
happen to encounter Katie and her demonic companion, Tobi, enabling the franchise to
tell wider and more intricately intertwined stories.
It seems almost certain that the seventh movie will continue this trend in some way, introducing
a new group of characters doomed to have their lives ruined by Katie and her family.
Keeping with the style of the first six films, you can also bet your bottom dollar that the
movie will also be presented via a found footage format.
That's kind of the whole point.
Despite the better part of four decades having passed since The Last Starfighter first wowed
audiences, the timing may actually be right for a sequel to the 80s action classic.
The original movie follows a teenager who beats a video game, only to discover that
said game was really a recruiting tool designed to find soldiers who can help fight in an
interstellar alien war.
Obviously, video games have changed a lot since then, which could present a natural
way to continue the story.
Speaking to Moviehole, the original movie's writer Jonathan Betuel said of the sequel:
"It's not a remake.
It's going to continue the story.
What's changed is time itself, certainly as the video world and the alien world have continued
to tick away.
It's not a time capsule of the '80s by any means, we're taking it to the next level.
Passing the torch [...] or the joystick."
Betuel will be co-writing the sequel, titled The Last Starfighters, with Rogue One screenwriter
Gary Whitta.
In March 2021, Whitta tweeted a sizzle reel containing hints regarding the plot of the
film, which seems to involve an alien attempting to assassinate an adult Alex, the protagonist
of the first film, and Alex then heading off into space to figure out what's going on.
According to Betuel, the road to making a sequel has been a rocky one, but he's optimistic
it will finally get off the ground.
Betuel said:
"I had to go through a process that took years to recapture the rights, but that was recently
completed, and although nothing is ever clear sailing, it looks like we have a really good
opportunity now.
So I'm really looking forward to taking it up."
Although 2019's wildly fun whodunit Knives Out was written to be self-contained, director
Rian Johnson wasted no time in letting audiences know that he'd be open to a sequel, telling
Collider:
"If this movie does even okay, I will in a heartbeat make more of these with Daniel."
As it turned out, Knives Out did a lot better than okay, bringing in more than $300 million
worldwide and justifying not one but two sequels, both of which will go directly to Netflix.
The move to Netflix is a surprising one, considering that the first film was distributed theatrically
through Lionsgate, but it was the decision of both Johnson and his producing partner,
Ram Bergman, to take the sequels directly to the streaming site.
Both films will follow Daniel Craig's drawling private investigator, Benoit Blanc, but he'll
be the only carryover from the first movie.
Aside from Craig, Johnson says the Knives Out sequels will each feature a different
cast, different setting, and a different donut-shaped mystery for Blanc to solve, similar to Agatha
Christie's Hercule Poirot novels, which served as an inspiration for the original movie.
While no release date has been set for either sequel, the ensemble cast is shaping up to
be every bit as impressive as the first movie, with Knives Out 2 set to feature with Kathryn
Hahn, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monae, Leslie Odom Jr., Edward Norton, and Kate Hudson in
starring roles.
"It makes no damn sense.
Compels me, though."
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