Having scripted the likes of Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as well as making his directorial debut on the latter, Shane Black is certainly no stranger to the buddy movie.
After scoring blockbuster success with 2013’s Iron Man 3, he returned to the genre in 2016, pairing up Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe for The Nice Guys – a film that proved to be a critical success, but one that struggled to replicate that at the box office.
Despite setting things up for a sequel, a worldwide haul of just $63 million may well have put the breaks on a second outing for Gosling and Crowe’s private detectives, but it certainly doesn’t seem to have dampened Black’s enthusiasm for another movie.
“In a heartbeat, if someone would pay for it,” Black told Fandango when asked whether he’d still be interested in making The Nice Guys 2. “We had all kinds of ideas. The problem is it didn’t do that well at the box office. I imagine it will break even, which is not a formula for reacquiring two very expensive movie stars and proceeding with a sequel. I’m ready to go. If someone decided that it were enough of a cult hit to justify that, I’d be on it.”
While a sequel could be a long shot, it was announced last year that producer Joel Silver is working on a gender-swapped TV spinoff entitled The Nice Girls, although Black isn’t involved in that project in any capacity.
