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Earlier today came news that Godzilla vs Kong director Adam Wingard and his frequent collaborator Simon Barrett have been tapped to make a new Face/Off movie for Paramount Pictures. At the time the report from the Hollywood trades noted that the film would be a reboot of the classic 1997 action-thriller, but in a new Instagram post where he confirmed his involvement, Wingard addressed that specific verbage, revealing that the film they’re developing is actually a sequel to John Woo‘s movie. “I would NEVER re-imagine or remake FACE/OFF,” Wingard wrote. “It’s a perfect action movie. Simon Barrett and I are writing a direct SEQUEL!”
A new version of the film was first announced in the trades in September of 2019 with Oren Uziel (22 Jump Street, The Cloverfield Paradox) at the time hired to write the script. Today’s news revealed that Wingard and Barrett will start from scratch on their version of the film which should have been a clue that they might be making a sequel rather than a full on reboot of the concept. This marks Wingard and Barrett’s latest direct sequel to a property from the late ’90s, having previously developed the 2016 Blair Witch sequel, a follow-up to the 1999 indie hit The Blair Witch Project.
As you may recall, the original (now first) Face/Off saw John Travolta and Nicolas Cage starring opposite each other and their characters undergoing facial transplants to become each other. It’s Cage playing Travolta and Travolta playing Cage in two completely unhinged performances. Hilarity, shenanigans, and explosions ensue across ever escalating set pieces, and in the end Travolta’s Sean Archer (appearing as Cage’s Castor Troy) kills his foe that’s wearing his own face. In the end, Travolta is restored to his former glory.
So where does this leave the newfound sequel? The door is now seemingly open for Travolta to return as his character in some way, but it’s unclear if that’s in the cards. Another potential angle is the character of Adam, Archer’s freshly adopted son at the end of the film who was previously tied up in Troy’s drug empire (and filling the void left in Archer’s life by the death of his biological son). There are a lot of angles, and a lot of faces, that this new movie could go.
Check back here for more details on the new Face/Off as we learn them!