Director Talks WANTED 2, Says It Will Be Shocking

Russian director Timur Bekmambetov is currently making press rounds for "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" and while promoting that film, discussion inevitably turned to "Wanted 2." The director shared that the film " is very much moving forward" ---

"An unbelievable thing happened three weeks ago," Bekmambetov said. "Because we stopped, we didn't know what to do for three or four years. Three weeks ago I came up with a great idea and I pitched this idea and everybody fell in love with it. And now I think we're on track. Right now the writer is working on the script, and it will be shocking."

Wanted is based on 2003 comic book series from Mark Millar and J. G. Jones but it deviated considerably from the source material. Normally, that's a move that doesn't payoff but the $75M budgeted film earned $341M at the global box office. The natural tendency for movie studios when a film is this successful is to immediately fast-track a sequel but the creative team behind the film wanted to nail down the story first. It looks like they finally have and that the long-rumored resurrection of Angelina Jolie's character can be put to rest.

"It's a continuation of the story, with Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy). Other people are dead, you know, we can't bring them back. The story is the same character, same mythology, but it's got a great twist."

In terms of the sequel, the first film was vastly different from the comic book, redefining The Fraternity as a league of self-righteous assassins rather than super-villains who brainwashed the world's superheroes (vaguely inferred to be iconic DC Comics heroes) into believing that they were simply actors who played superheroes on tv. It will be very interesting to see where the sequel takes us and if it can retain the charisma of the original.

Wanted is a 2008 German-American action film, very loosely based on the comic book miniseries of the same name by Mark Millar and J. G. Jones. The film is written by Chris Morgan, Michael Brandt, and Derek Haas, directed by Timur Bekmambetov, and stars James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Thomas Kretschmann, Common, Terence Stamp, and Konstantin Khabensky. The storyline follows Wesley Gibson (McAvoy), a frustrated Account Manager who discovers that he is the son of a professional assassin and decides to join The Fraternity, the secret guild in which his father worked.
Production began in April 2007, with filming in the Czech Republic later to superimpose the sets on images of Chicago. Wanted was released on June 25, 2008 in the United Kingdom and two days later in the United States, to both critical and commercial success. It was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing.