'Bloodshot 2' Is In Development With Vin Diesel Set To Return

The Vin Diesel action film Bloodshot was one of the last big movies to debut in North American theaters before the coronavirus pandemic brought the entertainment industry to a standstill one thousand years ago. (That's how long it's been, right? Feels about that long.) But now, eight months after the first film was quickly shifted to VOD, the company behind it is moving forward with a sequel.

Yep, a new report says that Bloodshot 2 is officially in the works, and ol' Vinny D is coming back for more.

At one point, Bloodshot was being envisioned as a launchpad for an entire cinematic universe centered on characters from Valiant Comics, which was given a shot in the arm a few years ago and rebranded into new comic runs that went over surprisingly well with readers. Now DMG Entertainment, which acquired the rights to Valiant's library of characters a couple of years ago, says they're moving forward with another Bloodshot film.

DMG Entertainment founder and CEO Dan Mintz told ComicBookResources that Bloodshot 2 is still in the cards, despite the first film's unfortunate timing at the box office. "I think [Bloodshot] was very successful in that respect, a lot of people saw it and it did very well in the post-release rollout but you can't use the same evaluation process, pre-COVID, to this," Mintz explained. "[Are] Vin Diesel and all those people going to still continue? Yes, because it did so well and the response to it has been so well, it's just that the response has been in a non-transparent environment, as opposed to a transparent environment like box office numbers."

It's unclear exactly who Mintz is referring to when he says "all those people" – does he mean actors, or creatives behind the scenes? The first film was written by Jeff Wadlow (Kick-Ass 2) and Eric Heisserer (Arrival), and was the feature directorial debut of David S.F. Wilson, who had previously directed an episode of the David Fincher animated series Love, Death & Robots for Netflix. There's no word whether any of them will return for Bloodshot 2, and the same goes for Lamore Morris's Wigans and Eiza González's KT, two characters who survived the action of the first film.

Of course, Mintz is right about not being able to judge the first movie's performance against a traditional rollout. The first film had a budget of $45 million and only earned $37 million globally, but it was a steady and successful performer on VOD in the early months of the pandemic. I guess that was enough to convince the folks in charge that people have a fever, and the only prescription is more Bloodshot.