Ten months ago, Face/Off (watch it HERE) star Nicolas Cage said he hadn’t heard anything about the Face/Off sequel, even though it was announced that Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard and his frequent collaborator Simon Barrett (You’re Next, The Guest) were working on a “direct sequel” to John Woo’s 1997 sci-fi action classic way back at the start of 2021. Thankfully, Cage and Wingard have since met up to discuss the possibilities of the Face/Off sequel – and during an interview with Collider, Cage said that it wouldn’t only be a rematch between his character Castor Troy and John Travolta’s Sean Archer. This one will also add their adult children into the mix.
Cage said, “I think Face/Off is a sequel that lends itself to a lot of twists and turns and unpredictability. It’s almost like if you factor in the idea of offspring and Castor and Sean having children and these children grow up, then it becomes like three-dimensional chess, and then it’s not just the two, John Travolta and myself, it’s four of us ping-ponging and going at different levels, and it becomes even more complex. I think there’s a lot of fertile ground there. I had maybe one meeting in an office, but I haven’t heard anything since, so I don’t know.“
In the ’97 film, Archer had a teenage daughter named Jamie, played by Dominique Swain, and Troy had a young son named Adam (played by David McCurley) – who ended up being taken in by the Archer family in the end. That adoption happened after Troy had been killed… but obviously his death didn’t stick.
Cage was also very positive about the idea of Wingard directing the film, saying, “He’s great, and I think we share similar tastes. We have similar sensibilities. I liked everything he did with Godzilla vs. Kong and I think that he’s smart. He has respect for cinema and various kinds of iconography. I think it would be great.“
Scripted by Mike Werb and Michael Colleary, the original Face/Off centered on
FBI agent Sean Archer. He is so obsessed with catching a homicidal sociopath named Castor Troy, who is responsible for killing the fed’s son, that the agent undergoes facial transplant surgery and takes the mug of his nemesis so he can be sent to prison to find out a bomb’s whereabouts and stop an attack. The plan goes awry when the bad guy wakes up and takes the face of the FBI agent. Soon, the new-faced Castor visits the agent with the villainous face and takes glee in taunting him, telling him that the face surgeons have been killed, that the good guy is stuck looking in the mirror at the face he hates most, and that the villain is going home to bed his wife and take over his home life. It escalates into a series of choreographed action sequences.
Neal Moritz is producing Wingard’s Face/Off sequel, with David Permut executive producing. Wingard has described the project as “a Nicolas Cage movie” and said he wants to “make a film that feels like it’s a lost John Woo movie. I want to do the irresponsible violence of some of those John Woo movies. I want to capture the sincerity of those Hong Kong films and what he brought to Face/Off.”
There’s still no word on when the Face/Off sequel might go into production. In the meantime, Wingard is working on a Godzilla vs. Kong follow-up that is set to reach theatres on March 15, 2024.
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