Almost 20 years after its theatrical release, “Lord of War” is getting a sequel. Vendôme Pictures (“CODA”) will reunite writer/director Andrew Niccol and Nicolas Cage for “Lords of War,” with Cage reprising as arms dealer Yuri Orlov. Bill Skarsgård, recently Pennywise in the two-part “IT” adaptation and the heavy in “John Wick: Chapter 4,” will play his son.
Principal photography will begin in late 2023, with FilmNation Entertainment representing the international sales rights while introducing the film at the Cannes Film Festival. CAA Media Finance will handle the domestic rights. Philippe Rousselet and Fabrice Gianfermi, who produced the original, are producing under their Vendôme Pictures banner. Cage, under his company Saturn Films, will also produce while Skarsgård is executive producing.
In “Lords of War,” the infamous weapons merchant discovers he has a son who is trying to surpass his father in the marketplace. He’s not just selling guns, but “trigger pullers,” too, amassing a mercenary army to fight America’s Middle East conflicts.
“There is so much more to explore with these characters,” Andrew Niccol said in a statment. “Plato said it best – ‘Only the dead have seen the end of war.’ I’m looking forward to spending more time in the company of the charming devil that is Yuri Orlov and now his illegitimate son – who turns out to not be legitimate in any way.”
“The Lord of War world has no shortage of ammunition in the possibilities of stories we can tell, and we are very excited to tell yet another one that follows Yuri and Anton’s dangerous journey,” Vendôme CEO Philippe Rousselet said.
Niccol is a writer and director best known for writing Peter Weir’s “The Truman Show, for which he was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 1999 Academy Awards. He won a BAFTA for Best Screenplay that same year. That film was preceded by the prescient sci-fi melodrama “Gattaca,” about a class system determined by genetics, and it was followed up by the likes of “Lord of War,” “Simone,” “In Time,” “Good Kill” and “Anon,” all of which dealt with of-the-moment social issues or existential questions brought about by improved technology.
Cage is on a minor comeback after a decade of being best known for a slew of direct-to-VOD action movies. However, even during that period he rarely went more than a few years without a well-received picture like “Joe,” “Mandy,” “Color Out of Space” or “Pig.” The latter brought career-high notices for the Oscar-winner (for “Leaving Las Vegas” in 1995) and he has returned to the big screen in a starring capacity in the recent “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” and “Renfield.”
“Lord of War” opened theatrically from Lionsgate in the summer of 2005, where it earned mixed reviews, along with a few raves, and grossed $72.6 million worldwide on a $50 million budget. Time will tell if audiences are interested in another go-around or if this is a case of “IP for the sake of IP.”
