THE RAID Sequel BERENDAL Officially Announced
This is no surprise, we knew it was coming, but the sequel to Gareth Evans' The Raid has been officially announced. It's called Berendal, and what makes this sequel so awesome is the fact that it's the film that they originally wanted to do first, but couldn't get the budget for. So they ended up making The Raid, which turned out to be the most badass action movie ever made. So I imagine this sequel is going to end up being ever better, more badass, and more hardcore than the first one. Evans explained the following:
The sequel idea came up while I was still writing 'The Raid', the first one. What happened is we tried to get the budget in place for a film called 'Berendal' first, and we spent a year and a half doing that. And in the process of trying to get the money for that film, we'd already designed the choreography, we'd already written the script, and we were already to go and we just needed the money in order to pull the trigger on it. And that's a year and a half of not getting any closer to getting the money. We were in a position where we just decided, you know what, f*ck it, we're not going to get it, we have to do something else with a lower budget. So 'The Raid' became that plan B project.
And that plan B project sure was incredible! There's no major details revealed on what the next film will involve, but it will have a bigger buget and be told on a larger scale. It will follow an Indonesian SWAT team that gets trapped in a Jakarta slum, and its members are forced to fight their way out. There are also plans for a third film! Here's what the director had to say during our interview with him,
The idea is to take it out of that building. We've already done something self contained, we want to do something now whereby the boss of that building and and the building itself everything that was terrifying and scary about that in the first film is considered small fry when it comes to the the second film. So, we go to a much bigger underworld organization, and it should be great.
You will be able to see The Raid on the big screen soon enough. It will be released on March 23rd, which is the same day The Hunger Games comes out. If you are forced to choose between the two, choose The Raid, because I know for a fact you won't be disappointed.