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| Photo from ClickOnline by Jack McGlynn (2013) |
Lately it feels like I cannot go a day or a week without talking about writer and director Gareth Huw Evans and his latest film, The Raid 2. Pure hype and excitement, followed growing impatience and total anxiety would be a good way to state how things have been for fans in the last nine months since the film wrapped principal photography and four months since Evans, joined by lead actor Iko Uwais and other select cast and crew members began touring the world over to promote the film. Fortunately after two weeks of limited releases, loyal fans including in North America, the U.K. and abroad will finally get to see the film starting this Friday, with further dates and locations to follow. And with all the praise the film has thusfar received in light of all the talk there has been about the third film of the franchise, Friday just can’t come fast enough.
One could also argue the anticipation that lingers in light of the long trickle of news updates on the current development of
The Raid 3, which
Evans has also gone on record declaring he would not touch on right away, while working on other films, including a seprtate martial arts movie that will bring
Evans and
Uwais back together.
“…I don’t have any plans to do The Raid 3 within the next two or three years so I’m going to take a break from that franchise for a bit.” said
Evans in a partial statement quoted from an interview with
Crave Online late last month.
“I want to do some bubthings outside of Indonesia for like two films, then come back to Indonesia and shoot The Raid 3. I have another one I want to shoot with him first. Still in the action genre and it’s something that [Uwais] needs to train for for a fair amount of time. You have to make good with some weaponry, my friend.”
Following up with that report is the latest interview with the actor now available at
Screendaily where it is now being reported that after working on a seperate gangster action film titled
Blister, he will work on that very same aforementioned martial arts movie, now back-to-back with
The Raid 3. This obviously gives genre fans plenty of time to catch up on The Raid franchise while
Evans continues to branch out to other ideas as a means of gaining further wisdom as a filmmaker to benefit the industry at home.
“The idea is that if I do these projects outside Indonesia, I’m going to learn a lot and I can bring that back to the Indonesian film industry.” says
Evans.
“Indonesia gave me everything, if I hadn’t gone off to do that documentary [The Mystic Arts of Indonesia: Pencak Silat], I wouldn’t be here today.”
As for the current state of The Raid 3, with no other information except the film will take place two hours before The Raid 2 ends, Evans continued teasing about the film as he has been for quite a while now. “I’ve got an idea and I already know what the storyline is, and it’s such a departure from the previous two, …I already see it being smaller in terms of duration, but the scope and the scale is still big only on a different level, a bit more controlled. It’ll be fun to do.”
Only time will tell before we get to learn more about what that all possibly means by 2017, on top of what we can expect from the heavy duty training
Evans mentions for
Uwais earlier on in their standalone martial arts film. In the meantime, the two are serving as action director and fight choreographer for director Timo Tjahnanto’s new action thriller,
The Night Comes For Us, which
just locked its principal cast of new AND familiar faces led by actor
Joe Taslim. And of course, the folks over at Merantau Films and XYZ Films are producing these gems, so I’m already dold.
On a seperate note, The Collective, joined by independent filmmaker and festival organizer
Jeff Lunzaga have officially set the date for this year’s
Herofest 2014 action movie festival to kick off on May 25, 2014 at the Berkeley Community Media in Berkeley, California.
And guess who is endorsing it?…
Better yet, just watch.
