May122018

RENDEL 2 Moves Forward At Raven Banner

Lee B. Golden IIINewscannes 2018, filmcombatsyndicate.com, jesse haaja, raven banner, rendel 20

The last few years have seen the wheels turn quite a bit for director Jesse Haaja who made history in debuting Finland’s first comic book superhero movie, Rendel. Nowadays he’s developing other properties including Furrow, but that doesn’t necessarily count out prospects for a sequel while genre specialist Raven Banner has anything to say for it.

Such is what includes Jeremy Kay’s Screen International report this weekend with word that sales on a sequel to the Finnish superhero hit film have launched at the Cannes market. Producers at Black Lion Pictures and Frozen Flame Pictures are planning an early 2019 shoot on Rendel 2 which has Haaja returning to the helm to follow up the story of a family man previously resurrected from near-death with a brutal, masked alterego to seek revenge in the name of a city crying out for justice against a criminal organization and their pharmaceutical cohorts.

“I can’t even describe how excited I am for this,” Haaja said of the ongoing saga of the masked avenger who fights a criminal organisation. “It was my lifelong dream to get Rendel to the big screens.

“Can’t wait to get back to work with the guys at Raven Banner, Black Lion and Frozen Flame. Everything has been working so well with these guys since the beginning that I’m absolutely sure that we’ll bring a bigger, stronger, badder Rendel to the fans.”

“We are very excited to bring the Rendel filmmaking team back together again,” Raven Banner managing partner Michael Paszt said.

Miika J. Norvanto, Trevor Doyle and Timo Puustinen are producing the film, while I’m more than curious on how far Haaja will go with one of his more recent concepts, Furrow, for which he filmed a proof of concept in Finland’s sub-zero wilderness for two days just a few months ago. At any rate, Haaja’s got plans and all are welcome to follow along.