When it comes to naming blockbusters that you never thought would get a sequel, Keanu Reeves’ fantasy actioner 47 Ronin has got to be up there.
A troubled production that effectively saw first-time director Carl Rinsch locked out of the editing room after extensive reshoots had seen the budget skyrocket to a purported $225 million, everyone was predicting a colossal flop months before it even had a chance to hit theaters.
As fate would have it, that’s exactly what 47 Ronin was, barely scraping past $150 million at the box office and being widely panned by critics as one of the decade’s worst big-budget studio efforts for good measure. Naturally, a sci-fi sequel set 300 years in the future was given the green light by Netflix earlier this year, and cameras are now rolling.
Actor and filmmaker Ron Yuan is directing the project, working from a script that was co-written by Lucifer‘s Aimee Garcia and former professional wrestler A.J. Mendez. It’s all very strange and entirely unexpected, so we’ve got literally no idea whether this is going to turn out as a disaster or stroke of genius, which is why we’re curious to see how 47 Ronin V2.0 turns out in the end.
Correction Dec. 7, 9:55am CT: Yuan is directing the project, not also starring in it as reported earlier. We regret the error.