Director Gareth Evans' The Raid and The Raid 2 are considered to be action masterpieces, but it doesn't seem that the long-awaited The Raid 3 is actually happening. The last we heard about this action sequel was back in January 2015, when Evans hinted that The Raid 3 might not happen until 2018 or 2019. The director has been keeping busy, with his new Netflix film Apostle arriving on the streaming service October 12, but those holding out hope for another Raid film will be quite disappointed.
Evans broke out in a big way with The Raid, which was later retitled The Raid: Redemption, when it debuted at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, and hit U.S. theaters in the spring of 2012. The director upped the proverbial ante even further with his 2014 sequel The Raid 2, with the director also revealing in a January 2014 interview that The Raid 3 will begin during the events of The Raid 2. But as the years have gone by, many have wondered if this third installment will happen at all.
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While promoting Apostle, Evans spoke with Slash Film, admitting that the first two Raid movies were "incredible" for him but that he "just didn't want to be doing Raids all the time". While there are still fans who are clamoring for a third installment of this martial arts action franchise, the more time that has passed, the less the director is interested in revisiting that world. Here's what the filmmaker had to say, seemingly closing the book on future Raid movies:
"And the more time has gone on from that, the less interested I’ve been to go back there. What we did with The Raid 2, we kinda close that off nicely, so it didn’t really appeal to me to jump back into that world again.”
Neither of The Raid movies were box office juggernauts, with the first taking in just $4.1 million domestic and the second earning just $2.6 million domestic, but they still developed a devoted fan base. The movies also launched the careers of stars Iko Uwais, who went on to land roles in big-budget American movies like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Mile 22, and Joe Taslim, who appeared in Fast & Furious 6 and Star Trek Beyond. Sony-based Screen Gems was attempting an American remake, but the studio pulled out in October 2015, while also losing director Patrick Hughes, and nothing has been heard of the project since then.
While many fans would certainly like to see Evans, Uwais, Taslim and company reunite for one final chapter of this action-packed saga, it just doesn't look like it was meant to be. Still, it's hard to be too disappointed, considering that these Indonesian action artisans have already provided fans with what are perhaps two of the most innovative and daring action movies of all time.
This also begs the question: how could The Raid 3 have possibly topped its predecessors, anyway? It's a question that Evans most likely has, or at least one time had, an answer to, but unfortunately, it doesn't seem we'll get to see what that answer could be, at least not anytime soon. Still, with Apostle on the horizon, the director's future still looks bright as ever, even if he doesn't revisit the franchise that put him on the map.
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Source: Slash Film
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