Wanted 2 may still go ahead without Angelina Jolie

Last week we got the news that Angelina Jolie had decided not reprise her role of Fox in Wanted 2, and that Universal had pulled the plug on the sequel as a result. However, according to The Hollywood Reporter Wanted 2 is still alive, and creator Mark Millar recently told STV that the film “will be certainly going ahead”.

“What I heard was that there’s filming this year for a release at the end of next year, so the plot that they had will have some modifications now. Her character will have to be written out completely. We’ll see what happens, I don’t know, it changes every day. Again, things get so out of your hands with film because 300 people are involved, whereas with comics it’s just you and your artist.”

The following quote from Millar contains Wanted spoilers…

“What was funny was originally ‘Wanted’ was just going to be one movie, and Angelina [Jolie] dies at the end,” related Millar. “The idea was that it was going to be self-contained, but the movie cost $75 million to make and it made $314 million back just theatrically. At the premiere the tracking was really good and everything, and the producer came up and said ‘What are we going to do for ‘Wanted 2?’’ and I was like ‘I don’t have any ideas!’”

“So they put something together, and it was bringing Angelina back from the dead and everything,” continued Millar. “I don’t know, I think that probably just didn’t sit easily with her, because it has to be a really good reason why somebody comes back from the dead.”

“I think it’s actually more authentic if they keep her dead,” added Millar. “She was the star of the movie really, but how cool is it to have the star dead and bring in another cool character for the next one?

Wanted 2 can still be successful without Jolie, but they’ll need to get a few more names onboard as I don’t think James McAvoy can carry the film by himself, especially overseas where the first film made most of its money. I guess they’ll now be busy rewriting the script, so we should hear some stuff on the sequel in the upcoming months if they intend to release it in 2011.