Netflix is planning to shoot back-to-back sequels for “Red Notice” in early 2023, according to an insider with knowledge of the project.
Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, “Red Notice” stars Dwayne Johnson as an FBI agent who is forced to team up with a thief played by Ryan Reynolds in order to best another thief, played by Gal Gadot.
Thurber is currently writing the sequels, according to Deadline, which first reported the news. Production on the sequels will also be subject to the availability and deals of its three principal stars.
“Red Notice” has officially become Netflix’s most popular film with 328.80 million total hours viewed after 17 days. It unseats the previous champion “Bird Box,” as the 2018 Sandra Bullock thriller dominated the Netflix charts for the last three years.
While the film didn’t quite light up Rotten Tomatoes, it appears to have scored big with audiences, and producer Hiram Garcia told TheWrap before the film was released that Netflix was already eager for them to make a sequel.
Indeed, “Red Notice” ends in such a manner that sets the dynamic trio up to return in a follow-up, but Thurber has been teasing recently that they may go ahead and make two “Red Notice” sequels at the same time in order to bang out a trilogy – and because coordinating the schedules of Johnson, Reynolds and Gadot once was tricky enough.
“Red Notice” was originally set up at Universal Pictures and Legendary before moving over to Netflix following a disagreement with Universal over the creative direction of the film.
Thurber, Johnson, Reynolds and Gadot are all repped by WME.
Netflix declined to comment.