The 1990s was something of a Golden Age for action cinema, delivering plenty of all-time greats. What arguably made the decade stand out the most, though, was the fact that so many of its best efforts never wound up being sequelized or franchised to within an inch of their lives.
Point Break and Total Recall may have gotten remakes but they didn’t get true follow-ups, while other beloved titles such as The Last Boy Scout, Air Force One, Con Air, Hard Boiled, The Fugitive, The Rock, True Lies and The Long Kiss Goodnight were all one-and-done stories. However, things have changed slightly over the last few months with Sylvester Stallone announcing his intentions to return to the world of Demolition Man, while Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard is helming Face/Off 2, which he’s working on with his regular creative collaborator Simon Barrett.
The project was originally announced in September 2019 as a straightforward redo of John Woo’s 1997 classic, but in a new interview, Barrett revealed that when he and Wingard came aboard, they never had any intention of remaking the film, and always had their sights set on a direct continuation of the mythology.
“My understanding is there have been many development processes trying to get another Face/Off going over the years. I think it was developed as a remake for a long time, and that’s where the confusion came from. It’s not like Adam and I took a meeting, and they were like, ‘Hey, how would you guys like to do Face/Off?’. We actively, for a year and a half, aggressively pitched Face/Off to the studio, to Neal Moritz.
Aggressively, like once a month Adam and I would have these two and a half hour phone calls with these executives where we’d just try to explain to them what our pitch was. No one could understand what we were talking about, because once the faces switch, it becomes real hard to keep track of who’s who. Basically, we convinced the studio to allow us to write a treatment, and then they understood what we were pitching. And they were like, ‘Okay, fine. You can write a script’. But it’s not like this existed prior to us pitching it. It was our idea that we really wanted to see come to fruition. To me that’s a slightly different thing.”
Additionally, the scribe also touched on the rating of the movie, saying they intend for it to be mature and explaining:
We are committed to doing obviously an R-rated, like real, legit Face/Off sequel.
Wingard has made it pretty clear that he’s developing Face/Off 2 specifically for John Travolta and Nicolas Cage to return, and while it may have felt as though the filmmaker’s success with Godzilla vs. Kong directly led to the blockbuster sequel getting an official green light, it turns out that he and Barrett had been pitching the studio on a regular basis to earn the opportunity. Although the big box office returns and enthusiastic reviews that greeted the MonsterVerse sequel surely would have helped.
