While nothing is confirmed just yet, it certainly looks like David Cronenberg’s razor-sharp Russian gangster pic Eastern Promises is getting a sequel. Whether or not Cronenberg is on board remains to be seen.
The Playlist grabbed the details on Body Cross, a proposed sequel to Eastern Promises that begins shooting this spring. Information on the plot comes from My Entertainment World, and it sounds a lot like the movie described here will work only one way:
Picking up where the 2007 film left off with the incompetent underboss Kirill (Vincent Cassel) thinking that he and his henchman driver Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) really have inherited the throne from his crime-lord father, without knowing that Nikolai is actually a clandestine agent working undercover in Russia’s federal security service.
If Mortensen and Cassel aren’t back, this specific plot obviously wouldn’t be possible. The cast is still not official and, more importantly, there is no news of Cronenberg’s return. He’d flirted with the idea of an Eastern Promises sequel a few years ago, even citing a screenplay from Steven Knight who wrote the original film.
On one hand, the thought of a continuation of the Eastern Promises world is thrilling to think about; on the other hand, without Cronenberg the whole thing loses a little steam. The director hasn’t given us anything since the one-two punch of Cosmopolis in 2012 (awful), and Maps to The Stars in 2014 (better, but still..). Several sequels to his films have been made, including about fifty Scanners movies, but none of them have had him behind the camera.
We will keep you apprised of any new info on this one.
