'The Old Guard' Sequel Has A Finished Script And Will Film Next Year
Director Gina Prince-Bythewood became the first Black woman to direct a big-budget Hollywood comic book movie with The Old Guard, last year's action-heavy adaptation of writer Greg Rucka's comic about a group of immortal warriors. Oscar winner Charlize Theron led the film's ensemble cast, and now the actress says the sequel will begin filming early next year.
Speaking with Variety, Theron confirmed that The Old Guard 2 has a completed script and that production will begin at some point in the first quarter of 2022. The timing there is slightly surprising, since Netflix has previously announced sequels for some of its most blockbuster-y projects that have not yet come to pass, like follow-ups to the 2017 Will Smith starrer Bright and the Chris Hemsworth-led Extraction, which came out before The Old Guard debuted.
What Could The Old Guard 2 Be About?
The first film left off with a big cliffhanger. (Spoilers ahead.) In a post-credits scene, we learn that Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo), the former romantic partner of Andromache (Theron), has been freed from her horrible fate of being buried alive in a metal tomb in the bottom of the ocean. Quynh, an immortal character, spent centuries trapped in a tragic cycle of drowning, being resurrected, and immediately drowning again. But now she's out, and she's introduced herself to Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), who had been temporarily exiled from Andromache's group of immortals. Could the two of them seek revenge on Andy and her crew in a follow-up movie?
Rucka, who wrote the original Old Guard comic, also wrote the screenplay for the film, which is a rarity in Hollywood. He also wrote a follow-up comic called The Old Guard: Force Multiplied, which picks up after the events of the first story and provides a big clue about what might happen in The Old Guard 2. In the sequel comic, the Quynh character (her name is Noriko in that medium) hates humans after being psychologically scarred by her underwater imprisonment. In fact, she hates them so much so that she now believes the purpose of every immortal is to make humanity suffer – so she tries to team back up with Andy with the aim of inflicting as much suffering on them as possible.
Another avenue that could be explored in a film sequel is the limit of Andy's immortality. Near the end of the first movie, she seemed to be sustaining damage more like a normal person than a warrior who has bounced back from countless "deaths." Have her healing/resurrection powers disappeared for good? Are they waning? How will that impact her participation in missions going forward and alter the group dynamic? As a big fan of the original movie, I'm curious to see how the story continues in The Old Guard 2 and even The Old Guard 3, since Rucka always envisioned this as a trilogy.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Prince-Bythewood was the first woman to direct a big-budget Hollywood comic book movie. We regret the error.