Gerard Butler, regardless of how you feel about him, has managed to carve out a very successful career for himself. He’s even managed to get his own franchise together, which started withOlympus Has Fallenand is likely to conclude with the upcomingAngel Has Fallen, which will round out the trilogy of action flicks. Now, Butler has provided us with some story details fromAngel Has Fallen.
The 47-year-old actor has been promoting his latest movie,Geostorm, which doesn’t look like it’s going to be a big success at the box office. But he does haveAngel Has Fallento look forward to, which is much more likely to be a hit. While asked about the third installment in theOlympus Has Fallenseries,Gerard Butlercompared the movie toLogan, in addition to revealing that his character Mike Banning is going to be framed for an assassination attempt. Here’s what he had to say about it.
‘‘This is as similar as maybe Logan was to ‘Wolverine’, it’s definitely a Mike Banning who’s almost, as I am now, Gerry Butler for his action career, aMike Banningwho is paying the price of all these years, all the ‘Olympus Has Fallen’s and ‘London Has Fallen’s.’ He’s paying the price for that physically now and he’s struggling a bit in the job. It’s no longer the kind of superhero Mike Banning, but it’s a guy who’s on a more challenging journey and then on top of that everything turns against him when he gets set up for this assassination attempt on the President. And some of those facts that he’s already struggling with are used against him and he ends up going on the run and is trying to elude the bad guys, and the good guys, and find out who the hell is behind all of this.’’
ComparingAngel Has FallentoLogan, which many consider to be one of the best movies of 2017 and one of the best comic book movies ever made, is pretty bold. But at the same time, it’s understandable, given his description of the plot. As Gerard Butler also reveals, it wasn’t even until director Ric Roman Waugh (Snitch) came on board that he thought a third movie would even work.
‘‘I couldn’t even see a way to make a third, you know we’d joke about it ‘What, Tokyo? Hong Kong? What is it going to be!?’ and it would be, for sure, what is it going to be? Until this idea came along and until Ric came along, now I’ve gone from not knowing what to do with it, to thinking this is going to be the best one.’’
Olympus Has Fallen($170 million worldwide) andLondon Has Fallen($205 million worldwide) were both big hits at the box office, considering their relatively modest budgets for movies on that scale. So, financially, it absolutely makes sense that we’re getting a third movie. Let’s just hope these comments made by Gerard Butler toDen of Geekmean thatAngel Has Fallenwill actually be a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, instead of just a cash grab.Angel Has Fallendoesn’t currently have a release date, but is expected to arrive in theaters next year.
