This week he's the director of the Stath-starring The Mechanic, but 14 years ago he was a commercials director making his feature debut with Con Air. Some say you should never go back, but Simon West is all in favour of **Con Air 2, according to an interview with Craveonline. It's just all about juggling that huge cast again.
Speaking about future dream projects, West also mentions a "CGI fantasy thing about Salvador Dali" that sounds intriguing. But it's the action extravaganza that seems to get him most excited. He's about to be reunited with Nicolas Cage for **The Medallion, and, he says "I'm going to put a bug in his ear about it. It's a matter of getting everybody together. If the two of us want to do it, we'll go after the others. There's so many people involved and it's about getting everybody to agree. But it'd be great!"
The idea of a kind of anti-Expendables is a fun one, but is it likely that cast could be reassembled? Actually, we're saying, it's by no means impossible, especially since most of the names from last time (John Malkovich, Ving Rhames, Danny Trejo) got killed. So unless we're looking at a prequel, Cage aside that leaves John Cusack (not averse to a daft blockbuster); Colm Meaney (in happy Star Trek semi-retirement, picking and choosing his projects) and a collection of others who'd probably jump at the payday...
The only sticking point we can potentially see is Steve Buscemi, whose Con Air con Garland Green, "The Marietta Mangler", gets possibly the single darkest punchline in the history of comic-book action movies. Buscemi hasn't turned out for a giant movie since The Island in 2005, and is currently busy with Boardwalk Empire. Would he be tempted back for a class of '97 reunion, or is he too busy and a bit too cool?
Whatever: it's all a pipe dream in the mind of West at the moment, so we'll see whether this goes any further. What could the plot of a Con Air 2 potentially be? Give us your thoughts in the comments below.
The Mechanic is out on Friday.