More than a decade after it came out, the thing most people probably remember about F. Gary Gray’s Law Abiding Citizen is its weirdly stylish poster and DVD box art (split in half horizontally with Jamie Foxx on a stylized white background and Gerard Butler on an ominous red background). But apparently that memorable aesthetic—which doesn’t really carry over into the film itself—left enough of a lasting impression on Hollywood for Village Roadshow and Rivulet Films to greenlight a sequel.
That’s what Variety says ,Variety also says the film’s recent appearance on Netflix’s top 10 was also probably helpful), with original screenwriter Kurt Wimmer and original producer Lucas Foster both signing on for the follow-up. All plot or casting details are still being kept under wraps, so we don’t know if Jamie Foxx will return, but him no longer wanting to do this kind of high-stakes thriller thing was sort of the plot of the first movie. We can assume that Gerard Butler won’t be back, because he exploded in the original movie, but everything’s a multiverse these days so who knows.
As for that original movie, it came out when the Saw movies were still popular and around the time when every villain actually got captured on purpose, and it starred Foxx as an assistant district attorney trying to foil the elaborate plot orchestrated by Butler’s character, a grieving father who wanted to tear down the justice system for failing to properly punish the man who had killed his family. Butler kills a bunch of people to try and teach The System a lesson, but then Foxx kills him, Politically, it seems a little… muddy.
Regarding this new movie, Foster says he’s “delighted” to “revisit these great characters and this compelling topic which seems even more relevant today than when we made the original film,” which is kind of a big thing to say about a movie where a man goes on a violent, Saw-esque rampage against the society that failed to execute a murderer on his behalf. Is that a thing a lot of people are dealing with these days?
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