SICARIO Sequel Director Teases Anthology Trilogy, Calls SOLDADO a Standalone Movie

About a week ago, we found out that the sequel to Denis Villeneuve's tense, ruthless drug thriller Sicario is called Soldado, it's set to be directed by Stefano Sollima, and the film will focus on Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin's characters from the first movie. Now Sollima has given an interview to The Independent (via The Playlist) in which he reveals that a third movie is in the works, even though Soldado hasn't started filming yet:

"The idea is to make three anthology movies with some of the core actors and [set] in the same world."

That's a cool idea, and justifies the decision to leave Emily Blunt's character out of the second movie even though she was the main character in the first film. It makes you wonder if supporting characters like Victor Garber's character are going to play larger roles this time around, or even pop up again in the third film to keep the world consistent.

Sollima talked a little bit about Soldado and how audiences won't need to have seen Sicario to appreciate it:

"It's not a real sequel. It's absolutely a standalone movie - a completely different story with just two of the characters that you met in Sicario. The reason that I love [Soldado] is because it's not exactly a sequel; it's something you can catch and enjoy even if you haven't watched the first one.

I loved Sicario. I feel the movie was quite similar to my approach so, to me, I'm just shooting another movie. Soldado will be much more cinematic than Sicario was; it's got an incredible amount of huge action sequences in there. It will be a different journey in the same world. Even the theme is different - it's not drug dealing, it's more on immigration."

That's a big claim: Sicario was pretty damn cinematic, so I'll be interested to see if Sollima and his team will be able to outdo Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins, who both moved on to Blade Runner 2. Soldado doesn't have a release date yet, but we'll keep you posted.