Tradecraft: Neeson Signs On for Taken 3

Deadline reports that Liam Neeson "is closing a deal in the vicinity of $20 million" to reprise his role as Bryan Mills, the former CIA agent hero of Taken and Taken 2 in a third film. That will be his biggest payday ever for the unlikely action star at the age of 61. Neeson was originally reluctant to return for a second outing of neo-Eurospy mayhem, but when the sequel grossed a staggering $376 million, a third entry seemed inevitable. (Indeed, Part 2 left the door decidedly open for another follow-up.) I loved the first film. The second wasn't nearly as good, but I still found it quite entertaining. It would be great if Luc Besson's EuropaCorp could lure the first film's director, Pierre Morel, back for the third entry, but his commitment to giving Sean Penn's career its own Taken-style neo-Eurospy jolt in The Gunman probably precludes that possibility. Deadline suggests that Olivier Megaton, who helmed the sequel (as well as the third Transporter movie), is a likely candidate for the third one, too, but no deal is yet in place. Besson and Robert Mark Kamen are once again penning the script, as they did for the first two entries in the series.

Tradecraft: More Transporter Movies Coming!

It was EuropaCorp's Transporter movies starring Jason Statham that ushered in the whole Neo-Eurospy Age. From their success came further mid-budget action movies with European locations (and money) and Hollywood stars with careers in need of reviving, including From Paris With Love, Lockout, Erased and, of course, the mega-hit Taken movies. But now it looks like the original is coming back! Variety reports (via Dark Horizons) that Luc Besson's EuropaCorp has struck a deal with China's Fundamental Films to co-produce not one but three more entries in the Transporter series! What's not known right now, unfortunately, is whether or not star Jason Statham will reprise his role as Frank Martin. (Frank Martin is not a spy, but a professional "transporter," yet he manages to have adventures filled with enough daffy action to rival Roger Moore's James Bond.) Since 2008's Transporter 3 (review here), Chris Vance (Burn Notice) has stepped into the role for a TV version of the character. The show has already aired in Europe (and is on DVD there), but has yet to be seen on Cinemax here in the United States. So will the new trilogy star Statham, Vance, or someone else? That remains to be seen.

What is known, according to the trade, is that "one of the three installments will likely lens in China, qualifying it as a French-Chinese co-production." Together, Luc Besson's EuropaCorp and Fundamental will finance the new films, each of which "will be budgeted in the $30 million to $40 million range." Fundamental will distribute in China. Fox, who distributed the first two pictures in most territories, has a first-look option on the new trilogy, while Lionsgate, who handled the third one, has a second-look. No director has been hired yet. Personally, with the Chinese connection, I would like to see Hong Kong director Corey Yuen, who co-directed the first film with Louis Leterrier and choreographed the first two, return to the fold. (His Hong Kong spy flick So Close is tremendous fun.) But the most essential ingredient is undoubtedly Statham! I hope they get him signed ASAP.

Movie Review: Taken 2 (2012)

Almost four years after the original Luc Besson-produced, Liam Neeson-starring neo-Eurospy flick Taken (review here) became a surprise hit, a sequel finally arrives. And it delivers pretty much exactly what a Taken sequel needs to deliver. Think of Taken 2 as the Die Hard 2 of the Taken franchise: it adheres to the same basic formula of the original with the slightly diminishing returns inherent in reheating a premise… but does so in such a way as to leave fans of the original satisfied that they have, indeed, just seen another Taken movie. Gone, sadly, is the element of surprise that worked so well for the first film, when anything seemed possible around any corner. (I’ve never seen an audience uniformly gasp and jump in their seats the way they did when Neeson’s character suddenly shot someone in the arm unexpectedly.) That’s not really possible the second time around. So what we’re left with instead is the other thing that drove the original: Liam Neeson being a badass in a foreign city. And when the city is as photogenic as Istanbul is, that’s enough for me.

This is, of course, the first of two major spy movies taking advantage of Istanbul’s scenic minarets this fall. (Three if you count a brief scene in Argo.) We will see those same inviting rooftops play host once more to an exciting chase sequence in Skyfall, as we’ve seen them do countless times before, and it never gets old for me. Istanbul is one of my very favorite spy locations, lovingly photographed in genre entries as diverse as Bond movies From Russia With Love and The World Is Not Enough, Eurospy titles like Fury on the Bosphorous and From Istanbul, Orders to Kill, actual Turkish spy films like Golden Boy, and neo-Eurospy entries like The International. I’m happy to report that the ancient city uniquely bridging East and West is well-utilized in Taken 2 (though sadly Neeson never threatens to “tear down the Topkapi Palace” if he has to).

The movie’s plot is a direct continuation of the first film… though not so direct that you couldn’t pick it up easily enough not having seen that one. After former CIA agent Bryan Mills (Neeson) used his “unique skill set” to save his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) from Albanian sex traffickers in Paris, Kim has returned to her home in Beverly Hills and tried to get on with her life. Thus we begin, per formula, with the same sort of cheesy domestic scenes that began the first movie, but they’re far less excruciating this time—even enjoyable. That can mainly be credited to Grace. If there were a Golden Globe for “Most Improved,” Maggie Grace would surely win it hands-down! No doubt slightly embarrassed being a 29-year-old playing a 16-year-old, in the first film she overcompensated by playing Kim like she was 8. Not this time. Now (perhaps thanks to her experience playing a full-grown heroine in another Besson-produced neo-Eurospy flick, Lockout), Kim is a functioning adult. (Well, teenager. She still hasn’t passed her driving test.)

Bryan, meanwhile, is making some inroads with his ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen, looking every bit as stunning as she did in GoldenEye 17 years ago), after her rich-guy husband (24’s Xander Berkeley, not present in the sequel) left her. Bryan proposes that his ex and daughter meet him in Istanbul for a vacation when he’s finished up a 4-day private security job. And that, of course, proves to be a bad idea. (The Taken movies might be the first anti-tourist spy movies, insinuating that whenever Americans travel abroad, they inevitably get targeted by sex traffickers and their families! I actually know some women forever put off Parisian vacations by the first film.) Istanbul is too close for comfort, it turns out, to Albania, where a little village mourns the loss of many sons (all awful, evil criminals—but no matter) slain by Mills in the first film. Chief pallbearer is grieving father Rade Sherbedgia (The Saint, 24, M:I-2), and whenever he shows up there’s bound to be trouble. Sherbedgia’s character, Murad Krasniqi, leads a small army, like pigs to slaughter, on a road trip down to Turkey to have their revenge on Mills and his family.

Luckily, when Bryan and Lenore are, ahem, taken (after a rousing pursuit through the city’s old world streets and bazaars), Kim is back at the hotel hanging out by the pool. This enables Bryan, through some ingenuity learned in the CIA, to secretly contact her and instruct her on how to find the location where her parents are being held. His circuitous plan involves Kim throwing hand grenades all over Istanbul (don’t ask), but it’s suitably filmic and fun to watch—and it works! The film’s best scenes involve Mills and his daughter teaming up to save Lenore. Whether Bryan is talking Kim through a rooftop foot chase over a cell phone or shouting driving instructions at her during a high-speed car chase through the labyrinthine streets of Istanbul, the high-octane father/daughter bonding adds a welcome new dimension to the Taken formula.

The biggest disappointment compared to the first film comes from the action sequences. While I’ve enjoyed a number of Olivier Megaton’s films, he doesn’t have Pierre Morel’s gift for directing fights and chases in a lightning-paced manner that still enables viewers to always know exactly what’s going on. Instead (here more than in Colombiana or Transporter 3, unfortunately), Megaton and his editors fall back on that oh-so-popular zeitgeist crutch of cutting the fights up so rapidly so as to render them incomprehensible—seemingly in an attempt to disguise the fact that they weren’t shot very dynamically to begin with. Megaton’s perfectly adept with car chases and firefights, but resorts to that stroby fast-cutting to cover up the shortcomings in Taken 2’s mano-a-many-mano fight scenes. That’s a shame, because audiences want to see Liam Neeson being the badass we know him to be from the first film unencumbered by such gaudy distractions.

The directing doesn’t live up to the first film, but the surprisingly solid script makes the most of delivering a new storyline within the confines of the established series formula. The exotic setting is top-notch, Neeson is as good as ever, Grace is dramatically better than before, and there’s more Famke Janssen, which is always a good thing. The sequel also benefits from a more clearly defined villain to root against, and milks some considerable humor from the previously grating domestic scenes. (There’s almost as much anticipation in seeing how the world’s most overprotective dad will react to his daughter’s new boyfriend as how he will save his ex-wife from being slowly bled to death while suspended upside-down!) All-in-all, Taken 2 is a sequel that delivers the expected goods, and should appeal to fans of the original and fans of the neo-Eurospy genre at large.

Trailer For Transporter TV Show!

Despite myriad production difficulties, Cinemax's Transporter TV series (based on the Luc Besson-produced neo-Eurospy movies starring Jason Statham) is finally ready for a trailer. And it looks good to me! Chris Vance (Burn Notice) may have his work cut out for him living up to Statham in the badass department, but the car stunts and locations look on par with the hugely entertaining movies. Andrea Osvart, Delphine Chanéac, Rachel Skarsten and Francois Berléand (reprising his role from the film series as transporter Frank Martin's friend Inspector Tarconi) round out the cast. I think I'll add Cinemax to my cable package whenever this series actually premieres!

Tradecraft: Kevin Costner Mulls Spy Roles

Deadline reports that Kevin Costner, riding high on the huge success of his TV miniseries Hatfields & McCoys, is choosing between two fast-tracked spy movies. According to the trade blog, he's been offered what they call "the co-lead" in Paramount's new Jack Ryan movie opposite Chris Pine. The role is described as "a new creation, but a close cousin to the role of CIA bigwig Admiral Greer that was played by James Earl Jones in [the 90s Jack Ryan movies]." Costner would play Jack Ryan's Agency mentor. Perhaps more interestingly, however, he's also being sized up by Luc Besson as the next potential Hollywood star to make a comeback in a EuropaCorp neo-Eurospy movie. Deadline further reports that Costner's been offered the lead in Three Days to Kill, a project first reported a few months ago. "Costner has been offered the role of Ethan Renner, a government assassin who is dying. Before he goes, he is determined to reconcile with his daughter, while taking on one final mission." The trade blog adds that like the Liam Neeson mega-hit Taken, Three Days to Kill (written by Besson and his From Paris With Love co-writer Adi Hasak) is "a contained cost drama that is set in France and is a kicking showcase for a male star." Could it do for Kevin Costner's flagging film career what Taken did for Neeson's? I think the actor would be ill-advised not to find out. According to Deadline, This Means War helmer McG is in discussions to direct.

New Spy (and Spy-like) DVDs Out This Week: Leverage and Lockout

Although Paramount released the first three seasons of TNT's fun, Mission: Impossible-like series Leverage on DVD (Season 1 review here), it's 20th Century Fox Home Entertaiment who bring us this week's Leverage: The 4th Season. That doesn't really mean any changes for the consumer, though. We still get the same copious special features that we're used two from the previous seasons. Extras this time out include audio commentaries on every episode, a gag reel, lots of deleted scenes and the featurettes "Behind the Scenes of The Long Job Down" and "Writers' Room Job." In its fourth season, Leverage still feels pretty fresh to me. The Mission: Impossible formula is fairly evergreen, so there's a lot of mileage you can get out of a team of specialists conning a different deserving villain week after week. Highlights include a run-in with a suave, James Bond-like thief and a trip to Dubai's Burj Khalifa. The Leverage crew may have beaten Tom Cruise there by a few weeks, but shots of Parker atop the tower (and jumping off it) are sadly let down by budgetary restrictions and obviously can't compete with Brad Bird's IMAX gloriousness. Retail for Leverage: The 4th Season is $39.98, but of course it's cheaper on Amazon.

Also out this week from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is the latest Luc Besson-produced neo-Eurospy actionfest, Lockout, on DVD and Blu-ray. Both formats contain an unrated cut of the movie (no theatrical version available, apparently, except streaming... but in this case, that's okay; the theatrical one felt a bit edited for content) and the featurettes "Breaking Into Lockout" and "A Vision of the Future: Production Design & Special Effects." There's also an Ultraviolet digital copy on the Blu-ray, which is even less noteworthy than a regular digital copy, but still worth mentioning because someone probably cares, I guess.... The gimmick with Lockout was that this time the neo-Eurospy action takes place... in space! And Guy Pearce is just the guy to pull that off. He makes a great wisecracking badass (sort of a cross between Burn Notice's Michael Westen and Escape From New York's Snake Plissken), and it's really too bad that this movie didn't catch on and do for his career what Taken did for Liam Neeson's. This genre seems like the right niche for Pearce, and I'd love to see him topline more neo-Eurospy titles from Besson's efficient action factory EuropaCorp. Lockout is no Taken, mind you, but it's a whole lot of fun, and personally I find the crossroad of spy and sci-fi pretty irresistible. (The spy plot is actually a surprisingly major one in the film for a movie that takes place mostly in an orbiting space prison.) Retail is $30.99 for the DVD and $35.99 for the BD, though both are substantially less on Amazon, natch.

Another New Taken 2 Poster

Last week we saw the international poster for Taken 2; today the Imp Awards reveal the U.S. 1-sheet for the Liam Neeson neo-Eurospy sequel. This one hasn't got that succinct tagline, but it still manages to say pretty much all there is to say about this eagerly anticipated film with just one stark image.

Taken 2 Trailer

We just saw the first poster; now Yahoo! has the first international trailer for Taken 2! It looks like Luc Besson and his team (including returning co-writer Robert Mark Kamen and new director Olivier Megaton) are sticking closely to a formula that proved successful the first time around: the cheesy daughter dialogue before the action kicks in ("Isn't Dad the best dad?"), the phone call where Liam Neeson's ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills gives his daughter very precise instructions... and then Mills doing "what I do best" (as he puts it here) and kicking a whole lot of ass. Works for me! (In fact, just about any movie with a chase across Istanbul rooftops works for me. I'm there!) Taken 2 opens October 4.

Read my review of Taken (2009) here.

Taken 2 Poster

The international quad for the Luc Besson-produced neo-Eurospy sequel Taken 2 has hit the web, and the tagline pretty much tells us what we're in for. Sounds good to me!

Read my review of the original Taken here.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Nikita: The Complete Second Season

According to TV Shows On DVD, Warner Home Video will release the CW's Nikita: The Complete Second Season on DVD and Blu-ray on October 2. Extras include deleted scenes, an audio commentary on the season finale with writer/producers Craig Silverstein and Carlos Coto, the featurettes "What if? Writing the Fate of Division" ("series creator Craig Silverstein and other series writers explore the impact of the show's strong female lead characters") and "Living the Life: Maggie Q," ("behind the scenes with the star") and a gag reel. Retail is $59.98 for the 5-disc DVD set and $69.97 for the 4-disc Blu-ray edition (which also comes with access to an UltraViolet digital copy, for those who care). Naturally, both will ultimately be much cheaper than that from Amazon and other online retailers.

Tradecraft: Besson's EuropaCorp Has Three Days To Kill

Deadline reports that Luc Besson's EuropaCorp, the company that's almost single-handedly revived the Eurospy genre with mid-budget actioners like Taken and The Transporter, has struck a deal with Relativity Media to co-produce and co-finance their next neo-Eurospy title, Three Days to Kill. Written by Besson and Adi Hasak (his From Paris With Love co-writer), the trade blog describes it as "an action tale with a sense of humor." It sounds so bonkers, even for the Eurospy subgenre, that I think I'd better repeat their plot description verbatim: "It’s about Secret Service Agent Ethan Runner who discovers he’s dying and decides to retire in order to reconnect with his estranged family but is offered access to an experimental drug that could save his life but has hallucinatory side-effects." That's what I love about these EuropaCorp movies. They combine cliche with originality in perfect doses. They start out sounding so run-of-the-mill ("A disgraced secret agent has to save the President's daughter..."), only to throw out some wonderfully ludicrous twist ("...in space!"). In this case, that retiring agent trying to reconnect with his family part sounds kind of trite, and then they through in hallucinogens! Just like the wilder Eurospies of old. I can't wait to see the result... and who they cast. I'd sure love to see Pierce Brosnan in one of these movies...

Tradecraft: Tim Roth Spies on Jean Dujardin

Variety reports that Tim Roth has joined the cast of Mobius, the previously reported new spy thriller from Eric Rochant (The Patriots) starring freshly minted Oscar winner Jean Dujardin (who sent up the genre so perfectly in his two OSS 117 movies) and Cecile de France. According to the trade, "Roth plays a Russian oligarch suspected of laundering money through his bank." Produced by Luc Besson's neo-Eurospy factory EuropaCorp, Mobius will shoot in Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco, Russia and the Ukraine. Hopefully Dujardin's Oscar will guarantee this film a U.S. release, because I can't wait to see Dujardin topline a serious spy movie!

Tradecraft: Reelz Picks Up XIII Series

I could have sworn that I'd already reported on the new EuropaCorp-produced TV series version of Jean Van Hamme's Bourne-inspired XIII graphic novels, but if I did, I can't find the post. Anyway, Luc Besson's production company (the people behind such neo-Eurospy movies as Taken, From Paris With Love and the Transporter trilogy) previously produced a XIII miniseries starring Stephen Dorff and Val Kilmer (released on DVD and Blu-ray as XIII: The Conspiracy), and now they've produced a whole TV show based on the concept. This time Stuart Townsend stars as the amnesiac secret agent known only as "XIII," and Archer's Aisha Tyler co-stars playing a live action spy instead of an animated one. Bond Girl Caterina Murino (who also appeared in the miniseries) has a recurring role. Today, Deadline reports that the ReelzChannel (which is really a thing, apparently; I think it's a cable network) has picked it up for U.S. broadcast. XIII will premiere in June on ReelzChannel. One 13-episode season has already aired in Europe and Canada, with another set for broadcast sometime this year.

Tradecraft: Brett Ratner to Direct Fox's Teen Spy Pilot

According to Deadline, Brett Ratner (Tower Heist, After the Sunset) has signed on to direct the pilot for Karyn Usher's untitled teen spy drama at Fox. The project, centering on the orphaned teenage daughter of a CIA officer recruited to spy herself and mentored by a deadly and mysterious rogue agent, sounds sort of like a mash-up between Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita and The Professional. Last year, Ratner directed the slick but empty pilot for CBS's failed spy dramady CHAOS. Let's hope this one, assuming it gets picked up (and gets a title!), fares better.

Lockout U.S. Trailer

Luc Besson and his partners take their neo-Eurospy nonsense to outer space in Lockout. Yeah, I know; this is pretty much straight sci-fi, so what's it doing on a spy blog?

1. Because despite the outer space setting, the hero (played by Guy Pearce) is still a secret agent. And, better still, "He's the best there is... but he's a loose cannon."

2. Because it clearly embodies the same anything-goes gonzo enthusiasm as Besson's more down-to-earth neo-Eurospy movies, like From Paris With Love and the Transporter movies.

3. Because it looks utterly awesome.

We saw an extended trailerish featurette a few weeks ago here, and there's also this international trailer which contains some different one-liners from the American one:


Lockout opens April 20 in the United States.

Lockout Trailer

Well, this isn't really really a trailer, per se, but AICN has posted this promotional video with plenty of footage providing us with our first look at the next Luc Besson-produced neo-Eurospy movie, Lockout (here billed under its infinitely inferior alternate title of MS One, a moniker no doubt intended to evoke Besson's French hit District B13). As we learned when it was first announced in 2010, Lockout is not a conventional neo-Eurospy movie along the lines of Besson's Taken, From Paris With Love or Transporter movies. Instead, it is what movies like Agent 3S3: Operation Atlantis or Mission Stardust were to the Sixties Eurospy movies: a genre hybrid that happily handpicks elements from spy and sci-fi and anything else that comes to mind, throws it all in a blender and damn the consequences. This one's about a disgraced government agent who has to save the President's daughter (all standard, typically formulaic Eurospy or neo-Eurospy stuff)... in space! I like the twist. The footage here definitely makes it seem more sci-fi than spy, but it's clear that the film has that same overall feel and attitude as Besson's other neo-Eurospy fare. And, as I expected him to, Guy Pearce seems to make an absolutely perfect hero for one of these movies. I love his one-liners in the video. And I love that he gets to do what Liam Neeson never did in Taken when his teenage daughter was whining like a ten-year-old: he shushes Maggie Grace. (Grace is said to have a much larger role in Taken 2, and I hope Lockout proves why. Even in the brief snippets of her performance we see here, it looks like a definite improvement over Taken.) Lockout opens in France next month; Film District will release it in the United States later this year. Take a look:

Tradecraft: Jean Dujardin Spies For Real

Tradecraft: Jean Dujardin Spies For Real

Well, not for real... but, you know, not for funny, either. For real in a movie. Variety reports that OSS 117 star Jean Dujardin (now generating serious Oscar buzz for his performance in The Artist, a re-teaming with director Michel Hazanavicius) will play a spy again, but a serious one this time as opposed to his brilliant send-up of James Bond and Sixties Eurospies in OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost in Rio. Will audiences be able to take Dujardin seriously in such a role? I think he's a wonderful actor, but I'm afraid I'll automatically crack up if he ever raises an eyebrow, so well did he do his job in those French spy parodies! According to the trade, Dujardin will play "an experienced spy tracking a powerful oligarch suspected of laundering money through his bank" in Eric Rochant's romantic, contemporary, Monte Carlo-set high finance thriller Mobius. Cecile de France (Mesrine, Hereafter) will co-star as "a bright young trader." Luc Besson's EuropaCorp will distribute the film in France and is currently shopping the project to U.S. distributors at the American Film Market. While the trade claims that the film will feature an "international cast," there's no word on whether it will be in French or English. I'd assume French, though EuropaCorp has had a lot of worldwide success with English-language thrillers like Taken and the Transporter films, so you never know. Mobius is slated for delivery in winter 2012.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Colombiana

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Colombiana

Is Zoe Saldana the perfect stocking stuffer? Clearly Sony think so. DVD Active reports that the studio will release Luc Besson's latest neo-Eurospy effort, Colombiana, on DVD and Blu-ray on December 20. Written by Besson and his Taken cohort Robert Mark Kamen and directed by future Taken 2 director Olivier Megaton, Colombiana stars Zoe Saldana as a waifish assassin with a penchant for very large guns in the tradition of Besson's Nikita. And it's a lot of fun. (Read my review here.) The DVD, set to retail for $30.99, will feature deleted scenes and two featurettes ("Colombiana: The Making Of" and "Cataleya's Journey"); the Blu-ray ($35.99) will include all that as well as three additional featurettes ("Assassins," "Training A Killer," "Take The Ride") and a Colombiana PS3 Wallpaper/Theme. (Does that really count as a feature?)

Tradecraft: Who Gets Taken in Taken 2

Tradecraft: Who Gets Taken in Taken 2

Ever since we first heard there would be a sequel to the 2008 Liam Neeson neo-Eurospy hit Taken (review here), the big question has been who will get taken this time? It would be pretty weak if former CIA agent Bryan Mills' daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), got randomly snatched yet again the next time she traveled to a foreign country on her own! (And pretty unlikely that her dad would even allow her to take such a trip, for that matter, having found his crazy over-protectiveness fully justified.) Happily, that won't be happening. The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog has the first plot synopsis I've seen for the sequel in an article about the casting of ubiquitous Russian bad guy Rade Sherbedgia (The Saint, Mission: Impossible II, 24) as the villain of the piece. (Of course he is!) According to the trade blog, "Sherbedgia will play Murad, the father of a kidnapper slain by Bryan Mills (Neeson) in the first film. Murad is described as a vengeful man who gives orders and doesn't take them. When Murad takes Mills and his wife hostage, their daughter is enlisted to help save them." Hm. Well, I was hoping that Famke Janssen (GoldenEye) would get to play a larger role in the second film, and assuming she's the wife in question (the couple were divorced in the first movie), I guess she will. The part that surprises me is the notion of Kim rescuing Bryan. I'm assuming that Bryan will find plenty of ways to kick ass on his own, even in captivity. (Die Hard-style?) But I can't quite wrap my head around Maggie Grace in an expanded action role. She was by far the weakest link in the first film. But she was good on Lost, so we know she's capable of better. The biggest problem with her part in Taken was that she was required to play seventeen at twenty-five, and over-compensated by playing Kim as if she were twelve. Hopefully in this one, given that some time has passed, Kim will be allowed to have grown up a bit. Perhaps producer Luc Besson was so impressed with Grace's performance in his upcoming Guy Pearce neo-Eurospy actioner Lockout that he decided to expand her part? We'll find out when Lockout opens next April. Taken 2, as reported earlier this week, will open Columbus Day weekend 2012, written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and directed by Colombiana's Olivier Megaton. The action takes place in Istanbul.

Tradecraft: Taken 2 in October '12

Tradecraft: Taken 2 in October '12

Deadline reports that the eagerly anticipated and long-in-the-works neo-Eurospy sequel Taken 2 will open in North America on October 5, 2012—Columbus Day weekend. I had figured that Fox would want to open the action follow-up in the same January frame in which the original movie performed so well, but happily we will not have to wait until Q1 2013; instead we can expect more Liam Neeson badassery in slightly less than a year! As previously reported, Taken 2 will film in the classic Eurospy location of Istanbul under the direction of Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3, Colombiana), with a script by the writers of the first film, Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. Read my review of Taken here.