Wanted 2 Will Continue Without Angelina Jolie
Posted 02.28.10 by BrentJS
Almost immediately after the news broke that a planned sequel to Wanted was going to be scrapped following the departure of Angelina Jolie from the project, Mark Millar, the creator of the comic book that served as the basis for the movie, refuted the assertion. According to DigitalSpy, Millar admitted to STV that Jolie was not going to be a part of Wanted 2, but he said that "the first one made too much money for them not to do a sequel."
The idea was that it was going to be self-contained, but the movie cost $75 million to make and it made $314 million back just theatrically. At the premiere the tracking was really good and everything, and the producer came up and said, "What are we going to do for Wanted 2?" and I was like, "I don't have any ideas!"
There has been no explanation for Jolie's decision not to reprise her Wanted role, but it's likely that there simply was no satisfactory way to properly explain her character's appearance in Wanted 2 after committing suicide at the end of the first movie. In a follow-up article, DigitalSpy reported that Millar told STV that he thinks the resurrection of her character "probably just didn't sit easily with [Jolie]," and that it is probably for the best that she doesn't return in the sequel.
I think it's actually more authentic if they keep her dead. She was the star of the movie really, but how cool is it to have the star dead and bring in another cool character for the next one.
Millar said that he has "heard" that Wanted 2 would be going into production this year, with an intended late-2011 release, but admitted "it changes every day." Director Timur Bekmambetov is expected to return to helm Wanted 2 and James McAvoy and Terence Stamp have apparently committed to reprising their roles.