‘Con Air’ director still wants that sequel set in space, and now so do we

Legacy sequels are all the rage these days, as has been the case for a while, meaning that no smash hit blockbuster is safe from being dusted off and thrown back onto the big screen decades down the line. With that in mind, Con Air director Simon West is still toying with the idea of a second chapter set in outer space, which sounds like the greatest thing we’ve ever heard.

Nicolas Cage is back on the up and up after his VOD wilderness years, and he’s already proven that he’s happy to revisit an action-heavy role he first played in 1997 after confirming he’d held informal talks over boarding Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard’s Face/Off follow-up, so could Cameron Poe and his glorious locks be next?

Well, it might not be as straightforward as that, based on West’s spitballing during an interview with Den of Geek.

“After I said it, I was probably sent 10 scripts all set either on a plane or with a gang of criminals. The last thing I wanted to do at that time was revisit it. What’s really interesting that has happened since I made that remark, is the emergence of this whole private space travel industry.

We’ve got people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson setting up these companies to privatize space. That makes it [the idea of a sequel] more intriguing because it wouldn’t just be your standard space movie. It could be all to do with very up to the minute politics, and how big business is taking over from what governments used to do.

So I’d actually be much more interested in doing space now because it would explore the politics of that. Of these billionaires who are just able to set up a company and run kind of slightly ridiculous ideas of space tourism when before you’d go into space for altruistic reasons for science. Now it’s about making profit and pandering to really rich people.”

Do we want a Con Air sequel to be an incisive sociopolitical commentary on the perils of billionaires exploring beyond the stars? Absolutely not. But would we be instantly sold if Con Air in Space was announced? Definitely, sign us up right away.