Indonesia’s current film climate is a lagging a bit nowadays, and there have been casualties as a result-namely whatever the heck stonewalled production for Timo Tjahjanto’s The Night Comes For Us back in September. Thankfully some projects haven’t faltered, including Anggy Umbara‘s upcoming heist sequel, Comic 8: Casino Kings.
The film is arriving in 2015 with a larger cast and even greater scope to accomodate its larger budget following the success of its first installment in early 2014. Several cast and set pictures have appeared online, and if you’ve been enthusiastically following the career of fellow Indonesian action star Yayan Ruhian can expect to see him in the upcoming heist action adventure as well, that is if this picture has anything to say for it.
Ruhian contributed to the pre-production phase of The Night Comes For Us with action star Iko Uwais solely choreographing the fights, and Merantau and The Raid franchise auteur Gareth Huw Evans directing the action. Those efforts eventually got canned while Ruhian has clearly moved on Comic 8: Casino Kings, and training actor Frank Grillo earlier on with Iko Uwais for upcoming sci-fi sequel, Beyond Skyline.
Hopefully some more cohesive news will come our way soon, but in the meantime, it should be cool to see Ruhian on set with a number of seasoned Indonesian action favorites, even if he is ectoplasmic among them, figuratively speaking that is. Besides, One Good Thing and Yakuza Apocalypse should be on the way as well last I checked, and if it is at all in the cards, a hopeful reprisal as a new character in The Raid 3. These all remain to be seen, of course, but they are reasonable hopes to hold onto at least.