©Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Director Gareth Evans has hinted that he may indeed be making a third installment in The Raid series, following up on the original release in 2011 and its 2014 sequel The Raid 2.
The filmmaker, whose latest action flick is Havoc, starring Tom Hardy, was quoted in Entertainment Weekly as saying, “Initially, I had a concept that would’ve followed immediately after the back of The Raid 2. It was set literally minutes after the second one finished, but then I got busy with other projects, and then, before I even had time to think about it, so many years had passed that I couldn’t do that version of that film anymore. So I kind of just left it and cast it aside and thought, ‘Okay, well, I was happy with where we finished in The Raid 2, so I’m probably not going to do another version, not do a third part. So I just dismissed it outright.”
Evans noted that he’d reconnected with Raid star Iko Uwais while on a trip to Indonesia two years ago. The two had initially met in 2007 when Evans was filming a documentary on the martial art form known as pencak silat. The director was so impressed that he cast Uwais in his first movie, Merantau, which made its debut in 2009. Uwais next captured starring roles in the two Raid films.
As Evans recalled, “I hadn’t seen Iko in maybe seven years, and it was the first time we’d met each other in a long time. We keep in touch, we WhatsApp each other all the time, but this was the first time I’d seen him in a long time. And I’ve always seen Iko, because of the nature of how we met and the projects we’ve done, as my younger kid brother. And then, seeing him after the seven-year gap of time, I was kind of struck by how much he’d grown, how much he’d matured, how many different experiences he’d had.”
Evans declared that their 2023 reunion gave him a new concept about what The Raid 3 could be. So I haven’t dismissed it outright, and it might be a conversation to reopen. And it’s definitely something that if I was going to do it, I’d make sure that it was the right version of that film to make” and that “could live up to the expectations” of his fan base.
In Havoc, which is now streaming on Netflix, a corrupt cop named Walker, played by Tom Hardy, is shown battling his way through the criminal underworld. Evans is also basking in the success of Gangs of London, a British crime series that he wrote, produced, and directed.