MOVIE NEWS – Face/Off 2 seems to be making progress, but it won’t be released until it lives up to the original film’s legacy.

Face/Off is one of the latest classics to get a sequel, and its director says it will definitely be a sequel, not a reboot. After years of rumours, last month, Nicolas Cage confirmed that Adam Wingard would be taking over production on the sequel to the John Woo action thriller. Now Wingard has told Empire that the film will be an “absolute sequel” to the original hit.

In Face/Off, John Travolta and Nicolas Cage literally swapped faces: Travolta, playing Sean Archer, underwent a medical procedure to impersonate terrorist Castor Troy in order to gather information and prevent a terrorist attack. Troy, however, undergoes the same procedure, and the pair find themselves against each other in a world where no one knows that none of them is who they appear to be.

Speaking to Empire, Wingard explained that there are several reasons for making the film now, one of which is Cage’s current popularity.

Which is about as high now as it was when the first episode came out. He said:

“He’s just having such a moment. Even before Pig came out, we saw this as a Nicolas Cage movie. That’s become totally the obvious way to go now. A couple of years ago, the studio maybe would have wanted a hot, young, up-and-coming actor or something. Now, Nicolas Cage is one of the hottest actors in Hollywood again. We’re really honing in on [the script]. We’re not going to share it until everybody’s like, ‘This is the one.'”

“I think we really got it. It has been probably the most challenging script we’ve ever worked on, for a lot of reasons. There’s so much pressure in wanting to make sure that it lives up to the legacy of that project. But every draft you have these things that just click in, and you’re like, ‘A-ha! That’s really what Face/Off is!'”

Nicolas Cage would love to be in Face/Off 2

While promoting The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Nicolas Cage revealed that he would love to return in the sequel. In an interview, he said that there had been “a few phone calls” and that Face/Off 2 “maybe” happen. This was in contrast to an earlier interview with The Hollywood Reporter when Cage claimed that he had “heard nothing” about a sequel, but in the same interview, he hinted that such a film should be a sequel, not a remake. He said this in April:

“I have not heard hide nor hair about it. So often these things we read about are just conjecture without any base or foundation to it. I feel the same about National Treasure 3. It’s been 14 years. There’s no there, there. So, is it fun to think about? Sure. Would [Face/Off 2] be an exciting movie to make? Oh, hell yeah. But John Woo was such a huge voice in that movie. It couldn’t be a remake. I think these filmmakers even said as much — that something like that would have to be a sequel.”

Source: Empire