A sequel to David Cronenberg’s bloody-knuckled 2007 classic Eastern Promises has been in-and-out of development countless times over the years, but now it appears that the Stephen Knight scripted follow-up is officially swimming with the fishes.
While speaking with The Independent about his forthcoming Apple TV+ series Liason, Eastern Promises star Vincent Cassel revealed that “[Cronenberg] had a wonderful script,” and that “We were ready to do it and I don’t know why it collapsed. Now I don’t think it will happen any more.”
Cassel is still set to work with Cronenberg again imminently, with the La Haine actor due to start shooting the director’s next film in the coming weeks. The Shroud will tell the story of a grieving widower, who builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud.
Original plans for an Eastern Promises sequel would have picked up where the first film left off, with Viggo Mortensen’s Nikolai and Vincent Cassel’s Kirill taking over the crime empire from Armin Mueller-Stahl’s brutal regime. However, as a direct sequel continued to languish in pre-production hell it was reported that the follow-up, which was now titled Small Dark Look, would instead star Jason Statham and simply be set in the same world as Cronenberg’s film. Now it appears that neither will happen.
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