ROAD HOUSE 2 Adds Iko Uwais And Hidetoshi Nishijima Amid A Bevy Of Casting Additions This Week

It’s only Wednesday, but this is the second casting report we’re getting this week for Ilya Naishuller’s Road House 2 over at Amazon MGM with the additions of Iko Uwais, Japan’s Hidetoshi Nishijima, and Andrew Bachelor. The same portal just reported the additions of a prominent bevy of MMA talents such as Rico Verhoeven, Michael Venom Page, and Tyron Woodley to name a few, along with the return of actor and stuntman Jay Hieron from the first film.

Naishuller is directing returning lead Jake Gyllenhaal from Will Beall’s script and the studio isn’t doling out any plot details anytime soon, but the word via Deadline’s Matt Grobar is “the film is said to be a production of greater scope, scale, and ambition, with filming taking place across the U.K., Malta, and Savannah, Georgia”. That’s really all we have to go by for the foreseeable future until a teaser arises, but the big catch here for some of us will be Uwais, a powerhouse in his own right who swept the genre bigly in the last fifteen years, and as a screenstar who some directors can’t quite peg just yet in terms of directing action in the way that folks like Gareth Evans, Timo Tjahjanto and Liam O’Donnell have. The upcoming Skyline: Warpath also has Indonesian hostage thriller Timur and O’Donnell’s MRI on the docket so that should be plenty exciting going into the new year.

Naishuller comes off of films like Hardcore Henry and Bob Odenkirk starrer, Nobody, and with a sequel to Doug Liman’s prospective Road House treatment for the studio, time will tell how this bodes. I guess we’re definitely going bigger here, which should only add to whatever may be percolating behind the scenes for Liman’s own seperate interests on this particular IP.

And yes, I’m additionally thrilled that Nishijima is getting in on this as well. Some of his film credits over the years include Tetsuya Mariko’s Dear Stranger, as well as Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, and Takeshi Kitatno’s Kubi. This is a pretty big deal if you follow Asian film and casting news in general, so I can’t wait to see what role he brings to the table here.

Read more at Deadline.

Lead image: Iko Uwais by Ewet Aja, Hidetoshi Nishijima by Kei Ogata