Anyone who saw Violent Night saw that all through the house there were plenty of creatures stirring, mostly terrorists getting their butts handed to them by David Harbour’s Santa Claus who arose quite a clatter. It looks like Santa will be back, his bag of face-punchings and toys stuffed even fuller, when Violent Night 2 hits theaters in the next few years.
The Wrap ran a piece on how the blockbuster surprise of the holiday season is going to return, under the direction of Tommy Wirkola, to dive deeper into the lore of this Santa Claus whose naughty list keeps growing.
Violent Night, the film that took the idea that Die Hard can be a Christmas movie very literally by casting Harbour’s Santa Claus in the John McClane role and pitting him against a houseful of very naughty gun-toting terrorists led by the evil Mr. Scrooge, the Hans Gruber of wintertime antics, is getting a sequel coming from the same team that brought audiences the first movie. The film, a surprise blockbuster, made over seventy-five million on a twenty-five million dollar budget giving Harbour, whose career has consisted of bit parts, Stranger Things, and the failed Hellboy reboot, a starring actioner of his very own by slapping on the big red suit and throwing out some ho-ho-holiday beatdowns.
The same team behind the first, including the writers, Pat Casey and Josh Miller, will be back to deliver a second helping of eggnog-infused mayhem, delving deeper into the lore behind the Santa Claus created for the movie, lore only hinted at in brief flashbacks for the first film. Wirkola also added that the film would dive deeper into overall Santa mythology, saying, “There’s stuff we left on the floor like the North Pole, Mrs. Claus, the elves. But story-wise I think we have a really, really cool idea that expands on the world and scope, but still keeping that tone that we love from the first one.”
The film is just getting underway with everybody from the first one signing their deals and getting ready to crack open the story idea for the next one, a possibility that, because it’s centered around Santa Claus, can be set virtually anywhere that has a chimney to go down, a plate of cookies and milk left out, and a gaggle of meathead mercs that are in serious need of a holly-jolly fist to the face. If it turns out anywhere as good as its predecessor, Violent Night 2 should satisfy fans of the first film even if it’s knockouts and not sugar plums, dancing through their heads.
Violent Night 2 has been greenlit.
Source: TheWrap