Based on recent noises being made by a couple of the principal cast members, Ocean’s 14 is looking a lot more likely right now than it’s been at any point in the fourteen years since Danny and the crew pulled off their trilogy-closing heist in Thirteen.
If there’s one thing Stephen Soderbergh loves to do, it’s work, having been credited on sixteen projects in the last four years alone as either director, writer, editor, cinematographer or producer. The Ocean’s trio are his three most commercially successful efforts behind the camera, and the closest he’s ever come to making the jump into blockbuster territory, so if he wants to tackle a bigger project then there’s one staring him right in the face.
Don Cheadle recently revealed that the filmmaker was thinking about making it happen, and now Matt Damon has admitted that he’d be down for a return if Ocean’s 14 provided a story worth getting the band back together.
“It would always be up to Steven Soderbergh if there was a story. We have lost a couple of our members, so we would have to figure it out, we are a depleted gang now.”
Elliot Gould may have been the only member of the original cast to appear in spinoff Ocean’s 8, but Damon did film a cameo that was left on the cutting room floor, while he’s shown himself more than willing to work with Soderbergh under almost any circumstances having shown up in Che, The Informant!, Contagion, Behind the Candelabra, Unsane and recent HBO Max crime thriller No Sudden Move.
Wrangling the rest of the star studded ensemble may prove to be a much bigger challenge, though, but Ocean’s 14 could always position itself as The Avengers of heist capers by striking a balance between Danny Ocean’s band of thieves and the squad assembled by Sandra Bullock’s Debbie to deliver something that occupies the middle ground between sequel and spinoff.