When you are a studio executive and you have a film that earns $341 million at the box office against a $75 million budget, chances are you’ll want a sequel. That’s the case with Universal studios and the 2008 comic book adaption Wanted, about a team of super-powered assassins.
The problem is that the studio had been unable to get any traction in getting a follow up to the Angelina Jolie-James McAvoy headlining feature going. In 2009, Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov stated that pre-production was gearing for a late fall or early winter shoot. The next thing we heard about the project was in February 2010 and that Jolie had left the film and the script was going to be rewritten to eliminate her character, who was going to be rising from the dead considering she died in the original film. However, as time went on, it has been looking less and less likely that a sequel was ever going to happen.
That is until today, when It’s On The Grid reported that the first Wanted’s original screenwriting team of Derek Haas and Michael Brandt have been hired by to write a sequel. It is unknown if they are working from drafts developed for the previous attempt or if they will be starting from scratch. It would be my guess, though, the Universal is looking to take a mulligan on the sequel and start fresh.
It is probably too early to tell which characters from the first film will be coming back or even if Haas and Brandt will stay a little closer to the source comic book by Mark Millar and J. G. Jones than they did the last time.
