Stephen Lang has well over 120 film and television credits to his name dating back to the early 1980s, but sequels have never really been his thing. That being said, the grizzled character actor will be back on our screens as Norman Nordstrom when Don’t Breathe 2 comes to theaters next weekend, and he’s also listed as an executive producer, so he’s clearly been more involved in the creation and development of the follow up.
It marks just the third role of his career that he’s ever reprised after he played President in VOD action trilogy Rogue Warfare, and we won’t even be seeing his second recurring character until December of next year when he somehow returns as Colonel Miles Quaritch in the first of James Cameron’s Avatar sequels.
Don’t Breathe was a major sleeper hit in 2016, pulling in almost $160 million at the box office on a production budget that was under $10 million, and the concept appears to have been turned on its head second time around. The Blind Man is now tasked with protecting a girl from a band of home invaders, but given what we saw in the trailer, it’s not going to be anywhere near as straightforward as that.
Whether or not The Blind Man makes it to the end credits is completely up for debate, so it’s not surprising to hear Lang played it coy in a new interview when he was asked about the potential for Don’t Breathe 3, although he’s hardly against the idea.
“Well, I don’t really go down that road because there are so many possibilities. I really have no idea, just as I had no idea when we finished Don’t Breathe that there was any life ahead. We told a complete story and you have an obligation, as filmmakers, if you’re doing a sequel, certainly, it needs to be complete. First, it needs to be as good or better than the first and it also needs to be complete unto itself. We’re not just cycling through here to try to make something that goes on ad infinitum. That’s not interesting to me.”
Refitting the villain as an antihero in a hard-hitting psychological action thriller with horror elements is a great way to freshen up the premise, and if Don’t Breathe 2 performs then sequel talks will surely happen shortly afterwards.
