After racking up more than $160m. at the global box office with last year’s surprise blockbuster hit, Olympus Has Fallen, Millennium announced a few months later that Gerard Butler and co. would be crossing the Atlantic for the sequel, London Has Fallen.
The original took everyone by surprise when it outplayed Roland Emmerich’s White House Down in terms of box office success, with Emmerich’s action movie grossing $205m. against a $150m. budget in contrast with Olympus’ $70m. budget.
Last week, Frederick Bond was revealed as entering talks to direct London Has Fallen, and now we’ve got an official synopsis to share, as well as a higher resolution look at the first teaser poster, photos of which began circulating after its appearance at last year’s AFM.
[i]The sequel to the worldwide smash hit “Olympus Has Fallen†begins in London, where the British Prime Minister has passed away under mysterious circumstances. His funeral is a must-attend event for leaders of the western world. But what starts out as the most protected event on earth, turns into a deadly plot to kill the world’s most powerful leaders, devastate every known landmark in the British capital, and unleash a terrifying vision of the future. Only three people have any hope of stopping it: the President of the United States, his formidable secret service head (Gerard Butler), and an English MI-6 agent who rightly trusts no one.[/i]
Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, and Morgan Freeman are all reprising their leading roles, with Radha Mitchell and Angela Bassett returning alongside them. No word yet on who will be taking the role of the English MI-6 agent, but with production expected to start in October, it should be a matter of weeks before we find out, given that it sounds like he or she is going to be a leading player this time around.
Bond will mark his sophomore feature with the film, following his debut with the Shia LaBeouf-led Charlie Countryman. He’s set to direct from a script first penned by returning writers Katrin Benedikt and Creighton Rothenberger, with Christian Gudegast (A Man Apart) penning the most recent draft.
FilmDistrict launched the original in the spring last year, but Focus Features has switched gears to set an early October release for next year. It faces tough competition at the box office, opening opposite Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk, led by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Paul McGuigan’s Frankenstein, led by Daniel Radcliffe and penned by Chronicle’s Max Landis. London Has Fallen has an advantage in having an awaiting audience from the original, and it will be very interesting to see how it plays much later in the year with competition like this.
London Has Fallen will be released in the US on October 2nd, 2015. If the sequel proves to be a success like its predecessor, you can’t help but wonder if Paris, Tokyo, or Hong Kong might fall next.