It was back in August that Charlie Countryman helmer Fredrik Bond was slated to direct actor Gerard Butler in London Has Fallen, the forthcoming action sequel to last year’s hit, Olympus Has Fallen. Since then, Bond reportedly bailed on the project over a week ago, leaving the production six weeks to find a director.
On Sunday, news finally broke that the project may have found a replacement in the form of Babak Najafi, best known for his recent directorial work on the second installment of the Snabba Cash trilogy, Easy Money 2: Hard To Kill. If confirmed, Najafi will follow in the footsteps of filmmaker Antoine Fuqua in lieu of the latter’s opening weekend box office success with The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington.
Fuqua earned major commercial success upon directing Olympus Has Fallen for Millennium Films, for which Creighton Rothenberger and Kathryn Benedikt penned the script. The film, which also starred actors Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart and Rick Yune, and actresses Angela Bassett and Radha Mitchell, centered on Butler‘s role as Mike Banning, a disenfranchised Secret Service agent who becomes America’s last hope when the president and his staff are taken hostage within the White House by North Korean terrorists.
Rothernberger and Benedikt returned to write the sequel which continues Banning’s story as he must now foil a mysterious plot London during the funeral of the British Prime Minister. All actors mentioned above are currently expected to return for the sequel which will release on October 2, 2015, courtesy of Focus Features.
Stay tuned for more info.
H/T: Deadline