Hasn't the time passed for a sequel to David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises? The 2007 mafia film barely broke even, but landed on a number of top 10 lists that year, and talk of a followup has been going on ever since. In 2012 it was supposed to begin shooting with Cronenberg, Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel, and screenwriter Steven Knight, but Focus Features nixed it at the last second. The last we heard of it was when I spoke with Knight two years ago, and all he said then was that the script was great and that he'd love to get Tom Hardy to do it. Well, maybe that's still a possibility?
According to My Entertainment World (via Little White Lies), Eastern Promises 2 will begin production this spring, working under the title of Body Cross. Oooookay? Sounds super sketchy, but there IS a synopsis to go along with it...
Picking up where the 2007 film left off with the incompetent underboss Kirill thinking that he and his henchman driver Nikolai 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.
That sounds about right from everything we've heard over the years, but still it's hard to put any faith in the source. They add that Knight will be picking up the directorial reins and that filming kicks off in London this March. No mention of Cronenberg, though.
Take all of this with a grain of salt, of course. I find it hard to believe anybody would invest in a sequel to a mostly-forgotten film that didn't make money the first time, but stranger things have happened.
