Drive Angry's Unmade Sequel Would Have Been Epic

Patrick Lussier's 2011 film "Drive Angry" might belong to a genre hereby designated "neo-grindhouse." There was a wave of films in the late 2000s and early 2010s that sought to evoke the style or the content of a very specific type of exploitation movie that was popular in the 1970s. In addition to the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez 2007 twofer "Grindhouse" and its spinoffs ("Machete," "Thanksgiving," "Hobo with a Shotgun"), films like "Redline," "The Man with the Iron Fists," "Turbo Kid," "Kung Fury," "Hatchet," "Torque," "Deathgasm," "House of the Devil," and "The Love Witch" popped up on the regular. 

"Drive Angry" gleefully embraced its goofy, action/horror premise with aplomb. A dead race car driver named (sigh) John Milton (Nicolas Cage) escapes the clutches of Hell having stolen Satan's persona gun, a device called the Godkiller. On his tail is Satan's Accountant (William Fichtner), assigned with nabbing John and dragging him back to Hell. John, however, is determined to elude capture just long enough to save his granddaughter before a murdering cult leader (Billy Burke) can ritually sacrifice her on a Satanic altar. 

While on the road, John saves a young woman named Piper (Amber Heard) from her abusive boyfriend and steals the boyfriend's Dodge Charger. John and Piper will spend a lot of the film in that car, plotting ways to save his granddaughter. 

"Drive Angry" is a big heap of stupid, and wasn't terribly well-received by critics or audiences; it only made $41 million on a $50 million budget. Sadly, that meant a planned sequel would never be put into production. This is a pity because Lussier's plans, related recently to SyFy Wire, sounded really fun. John Milton would return to avenge the murder of Satan (!).

At the end of "Drive Angry," the day is saved (not really a spoiler), and John Milton agrees to return to Hell with the Accountant. According to Lussier, his sequel would have seen the former enemies becoming a badass, hell-powered revenge duo, armed with the Godkiller, taking to the road and getting good old-fashioned, supernatural blood revenge against a gang of demonic baddies. It seems that Satan would have briefly appeared in the second "Drive Angry" ... only to be killed. In Lussier's vision, Satan is sort of like a prison warden. Without a warden in place, all Hell would literally break loose. Lussier said: 

"The Accountant and the bureaucracy is trying to keep the walls of Hell from totally crumbling because everybody can get out now. [...] The warden's no longer there. So we always thought of it as a big prison riot and how do you control that and the guys who started the riot? If you don't bring them back and make an example of them, everybody's gonna get out. [...] I want to see that movie! [...] We'd make it as a cartoon. Hell, I don't care!"

"Drive Angry" doesn't have a lot of pop culture presence in 2024, sadly, and it would be unlikely a studio would want to pour any money into a non-bankable intellectual property. "Drive Angry" was also filmed in 3dD during that brief post-"Avatar" window when filmmakers were forcing a 3-D comeback. No one recalls that era with fondness.

The most sellable aspect of "Drive Angry 2" would be the presence of Nicolas Cage, still popular and widely beloved; "Longlegs," currently in theaters, is a minor hit. If an animation studio is game, let them know Lussier is too.