Given the reviews, we would not have expected to see Gerard Butler-starring crime thriller Den Of Thieves to spawn a sequel. And yet, spawn one it has, with Butler, 50 Cent, O'Shea Jackson Jr. and writer/director Christian Gudegast all returning for some more running, punching and likely bullet-swapping.
The first film had Butler's LAPD Sheriff "Big Nick" O'Brien taking down a bank robbery gang that included 50 Cent's Levoux and Jackson Jr's Donnie, but things will be expanding out internationally for the sequel. In the new one, Big Nick is tracking Donnie in particular (who, spoiler alert, was revealed to be much more of a mastermind than he appeared to be at the end of the movie), as he teams up with the infamous Panther mafia to rob the world's biggest diamond exchange.
Though the box office didn't necessarily scream sequeltunity, the movie has made more than $57 million worldwide and saved a lot of money on the original budget and marketing through tax incentives and pre-sales. Which is the boring movie maths way to say that the producers, including Mark Canton and Tucker Tooley, believe it makes sense to shoot another with STX International and Diamond Films.
In related Butler news, his other sequel, in this case Olympus Has Fallen second follow-up Angel Has Fallen has added Piper Perabo to its cast. The movie finds Butler's Mike Banning dealing with a terrorist attack on presidential plane Air Force One. That film has Ric Roman Waugh in the director's chair and will shoot this year.
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