Sicario 2, ‘Soldado’, will be ‘darker and more brutal’, says screenwriter

He’s out and about promoting his latest thriller, Hell Or High Water (which itself is pretty darned good), but screenwriter Taylor Sheridan has been speaking about his next script, the sequel to Sicario, Soldado.

The film will be directed by Stefano Sollima (Gomorrah), and will see the return of both Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin‘s characters (though not Emily Blunt’s).

Here’s what he had to say about the script, which he is still hard at work on, to Collider.

“Lionsgate understood that they bought something that was a spec [on the first film]. So there was a certain amount of latitude they had to give me [on the sequel]. What usually would be a long meeting about what’s this character about, what’s his arc – we didn’t have that. They trusted me to just go do it, and with Sicario, which I’m really proud of, it really approaches some difficult subjects,” he said.

It sounds like the tone of the next film will be a little darker, and indeed more brutal. The screenwriter went on…

“I didn’t want to demean that with the second one. So I really wrote something I double dared them to actually make. Ten times more unsentimental, more vicious and really reflective… It’s funny a lot of people think Sicario‘s about the drug war and the cartels. It’s not. It’s a movie about American policy and the way that we police and [Sicario 2] is that on steroids.”

There’s even talk of a third movie on the way, but I guess we’ll have to see how well the second one performs. If its half as good as the first film in terms of reception and quality, we’re all in for a treat.

More at the end of the link above.