By Russ Fischer/Nov. 18, 2011 3:30 pm EST
The 300 news comes from Variety’s Jeff Snieder, who said via Twitter, “UPDATE: JOEL EDGERTON has passed on the 300 sequel.”
The role was offered to Edgerton at the same time that he was said to be up for one of the two lead roles in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. We’ve since heard that the U.N.C.L.E. gig may not have been an offer so much as a bit of agency machination, perhaps to try to massage the 300 deal. Either way the point is moot as U.N.C.L.E. isn’t happening for a while and Edgerton doesn’t want the role in 300: Battle of Artemisia.
And then there’s David Cronenberg’s sequel to his own 1986 film The Fly. News of that possibility first cropped up a couple years ago when Cronenberg was said to be writing and attached to direct a remake of his own remake. But this fall he said,
The Fly is not exactly a remake, it’s sort of a sequel, kinda. Yeah, that was a thing. I’ve written a script of that, and I don’t know if that’s going to really happen, but that has to do with Fox.
Cronenberg does continue to talk about a sequel to Eastern Promises, which has been a conversation topic for a couple years. Steven Knight scripted a sequel and Viggo Mortensen wants to reprise his role as a Russian gangster. That one sounds a bit more viable, as Cronenberg said,
Finally, while Warner Bros. was recently moving forward somewhat quickly on Londongrad, which tells of the mysterious death of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned in 2006, the movie has stalled a bit. That’s because Rupert Wyatt, who was briefly looking like the film’s director, won’t make it after all.
Eastern Promises might happen. There is a script that we all like, including Viggo, and Focus is interested.
