Is That An ‘Eastern Promise’? Cronenberg, Mortensen And Cassel To Re-Team!

It isn’t often that we hear about a sequel and actually get
excited, but this one has real promise. Or, promises, rather. News first
emerged a few years ago that legendary director David Cronenberg (The Fly, On the Road, Cosmopolis ) was interested in doing a sequel for Eastern Promises, and it looks as though that sequel might be closer than we think.

According to Latino Review, the movie’s original stars Viggo Mortensen (Lord of the Rings, The Road) and Vincent Cassel (Black Swan, La Haine, Shrek) are in talks to reprise their roles for Eastern Promises 2. What’s more, Vulture is reporting that the sequel:

Picks up where the 2007 film left off —
with the incompetent underboss Kirill (Cassel) thinking that he and his
henchman driver Nikolai (Mortensen) really have inherited the throne
from his crime-lord father, without knowing that Nikolai is actually a
clandestine agent working undercover in Russia’s federal security
service.

Sounds like classic Cronenberg — the director laureate of transgression and body-horror —
to us. He’ll be back behind the camera directing a script from Steven
Knight (again), and if the epic steamy bath-house scene from the
previous film, in which Nikolai, stark naked and weaponless, must fight
for his life with two knife-wielding assassins, is anything to go by
then this flesh-fetishist is more than ripe for the directing role.

Mortensen’s enigmatic tough guy always works for us, too. And he’s worked closely with Cronenberg on more than Eastern Promises. He starred in A History of Violence,
the tense and brutal crime thriller which bagged awards for both
Mortensen and Cronenberg. With a return from Cassel who in the first
movie played the out-of-control son who was always brawling and swigging
booze from the bottle, we would be right in thinking that these three
form a magnificent trio.

We can’t help but thinking that this would make an amazing TV series, too. Agree?