Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery are reuniting with director Troy Duffy for a third installment in their popular action thriller film series, The Boondock Saints. The franchise’s second sequel, The Boondock Saints III, is set to continue the saga of Irish fraternal twin brothers, Murphy and Connor MacManus, who will resume their signature vigilantism, Deadline is reporting.
Impossible Dream Entertainment partners Shaun Redick (Get Out, BlacKkKlansman) and Yvette Yates Redick are producing the drama with Don Carmody (Good Will Hunting) and Duffy. Reedus and Flannery are executive producing the feature with Nat McCormick of The Exchange and Todd Myers of Dragonfly Films, which is financing the project. Duffy and Flanery also wrote, and Reedus offered significant input on, the script for, the thriller. The Exchange will broker The Boondock Saints III‘s worldwide sales at this year’s Virtual American Film Market.
The filmmakers hope to shoot the series’ third installment next year. Principal photography on the movie is expected to begin after the actors finish their current television projects; Reedus is concluding his 11-year run on The Walking Dead, and Flanery is wrapping his work on the action crime television series, The Boys.
Duffy told Deadline that the The Boondock Saints III‘s producers hope to bring back other cast members from the first two entries of the franchise, including Willem Dafoe. However, the Oscar-nominated actor isn’t currently involved in the series’ upcoming second sequel, according to his reps.
Dafoe played FBI special agent Paul Smecker, who was assigned to investigate the murders that were committed by the MacManus twins in the franchise’s first two installments. But the detective soon began to admire the brothers’ cause of ridding their Boston-area hometown of all crime.
“The fans have loved these characters for 20 years,” Duffy also told Deadline.
“They use terms of endearment like ‘the Brothers’ or ‘the Boys.
‘ We left them in jail at the end of Boondock 2 and fans want to know what happened to them.
“Norman and Sean have been a driving force to keep this franchise on track and break some new ground story-wise. The fans have been waiting. They literally ask about it daily, and I am really excited to be working with Impossible Dream to make Boondock III a reality,” the director added.
The production on the upcoming drama was turbulent, though, as Flanery tweeted in 2017 that he and Reedus were no longer involved in the feature because of disagreements. But Flanery eventually became the driving force in getting the current draft finished, and mending whatever differences the filmmakers had, Duffy revealed.
At the end of Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, the brothers are finally put in jail for their vigilante crimes. The upcoming movie will pick up after their incarciration.
“Where we’re going is, the brothers are older,” Duffy shared. “They are coming out into a brand new world that is not like the one they left. They are at odds. One wants to continue, the other doesn’t.
“There’s a new enemy out there, not like the traditional ones they’ve faced,” the helmer continued. “That’s the thing that is timely about this one. I asked the fan base once, who would you most like to see Connor and Murphy kill?…The number one answer was, politicians. [So] I wrote a scene…where one of them says, ‘Are you kidding? You can’t kill a politician,’ and the other says, ‘Are you kidding me? They’re the ones doing it.'”
Duffy added that the series’ third entry follows Connor and Murphy as “they’re released from prison after staying there much longer than expected, to a brand new world. They’re at odds on whether to push forward. But the type of people we face today in our society, is unlike any we’ve faced before. And that brings them together and they say, ‘We cannot turn our backs on this.'”