Although it wasn’t a massive blockbuster that set the box office on fire, Red did okay, grossing $164 million worldwide on a budget of around $58 million. Summit Entertainment obviously thinks that’s enough to start working on a sequel, as Variety report they’ve hired Jon and Eric Hoeber, who worked on the first film and also wrote the upcoming Battleship, to come up with a follow-up.
Red was actually quite unusual, as with a cast including Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren, it was a rare action film that actually managed to connect with an older audience. Summit is obviously hoping there’s more money to be made from that demographic with future movies. Indeed, it’s the company’s highest grossing movie outside the world of Twilight.
Let’s hope though that cast members wanting a pay upgrade doesn’t make the sequel too expensive to shoot, as it was the chemistry between a fine group of actors that made Red watchable, rather than anything inherent in the script or premise. Indeed the Hoeber’s script was one of the weaker elements, so without the DC Comic books, which only ran for three issues (that was how long they were supposed to run) and which formed the loose basis for the first film, let’s hope they can come up with something worthwhile for Willis and his group of aging, old school spies to do next.