“Wanted” Sequel Already In The Works

Wanted starring Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, and James McAvoy is hardly the most highly anticipated movie of the summer season. It doesn’t even open until June 27, yet this weekend we learned that the studio is already planning a sequel.

Screenwriters Derek Haas and Michael Brandt have already been hired by Universal to write a sequel to Wanted. Derek Haas had this to say:

“We’re just finishing up a book adaptation for Universal of the James Siegel novel ‘Deceit.’ We’ve been hired to write the sequel to ‘Wanted’ by the same studio,â€Â? Haas tells Pajiba . “And we’ve got a few more things in the hopper that it’s a little premature to talk about.â€Â?

“‘Wanted’ has been terrific. We first started working on it when only the first issue of the comic came out, and as the book became crazier and crazier, we tried to keep the script grounded. Timur Bekmambetov is directing and has been interesting and gratifying to work with. The movie is going to be a gigantic, hard-R action movie that we hope will satisfy the comic fans.â€Â?

It’s not unusual for studios to greenlight scripts for sequels to films before those films are released when they feel the movies will be huge, but Wanted has not been getting the kind of buzz that usually surrounds these types of movies. If anything, the buzz around Wanted has been decidedly negative (for whatever reason).

Wanted is based on a graphic novel and tells the story of a young man who finds out his long lost father is an assassin. When his father is murdered, the son is recruited into his father’s old organization and trained to follow in his father’s footsteps.

One can only assume that test audiences have been giving the film some fantastic scores - the kind of scores that makes Universal feel like they have a franchise on their hands. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. The newest trailer actually looks kind of cool to me.

Wanted - Movie Trailer

Wanted opens in theaters on June 27, 2008.