Five years after the first film became one of the biggest sleeper hits of 2016 by earning $157 million at the box office on a budget of less than $10 million, Stephen Lang’s Norman Nordstrom returns to the big screen when Don’t Breathe 2 reaches theaters this coming August.
The follow-up would have arrived long before now if it wasn’t for the Coronavirus pandemic, which saw shooting pushed back to last summer as the cast and crew quarantined upon their arrival in Serbia ahead of the three-month production getting underway. In a twist on the original premise, which saw a gang of home invaders receive more than they bargained for in the grizzled form of Lang’s sole occupant, the sequel follows The Blind Man living in isolation as the father figure to a young girl who survived a fire that killed her parents, only for the sins of their respective pasts to come back and haunt them.
Don’t Breathe 2 has now been officially rated by the MPAA, and the good news for fans of the opener is that it’s coming armed with an R for ‘strong bloody violence, gruesome images, and language,’ so new director Rodo Sayagues clearly hasn’t watered down any of the aspects that made Fede Alvarez’s first chapter so popular.
Sayagues wrote and co-produced Don’t Breathe, meaning he’s already more than familiar with what makes The Blind Man tick, and while the box office is still struggling to return to its former glories, an atmospheric thriller that continues the story told in a surprise smash hit should be more than enough to guarantee healthy returns for Don’t Breathe 2 when it comes to multiplexes everywhere in less than three months on August 13th.