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Another ‘Boondock Saints’ sequel is reportedly in the works
The Boston-set vigilante movie will feature Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery training a new generation of "The Boondock Saints."
“The Boondock Saints,” the 1999 Boston-set vigilante movie that became a cult classic in the DVD era, is reportedly getting a second sequel.
According to Deadline, Norman Reedus (“The Walking Dead”) and Sean Patrick Flanery (“Saw: The Final Chapter”) will reprise their roles in the “Boondock Saints” sequel as the McManus brothers, fraternal Irish twins who enact bloody justice on Boston’s criminal underworld.
In the planned “Boondock Saints” sequel, Reedus and Flanery would reportedly find and train a new generation of Saints, opening the film up to franchise opportunities in a movie landscape that has seen studios searching for the next “John Wick”.
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Thunder Road, one of the production studios responsible for the Keanu Reeves action franchise, will team up with Dragonfly Films, the company that originally produced “Boondock Saints” in 1999, per Deadline.
“The Boondock Saints” origin story
New Hampshire native Troy Duffy, then working as a bartender, wrote “Boondock Saints,” his first-ever script, in 1996, igniting a bidding war between studios. After being purchased and then dropped by Miramax, the film rights ended up at Franchise Pictures.
The original “Boondock Saints” was filmed in Boston and Toronto in August and September 1998. With Reedus and Flanery largely unknown to that point, Willem Dafoe was the biggest star in the film, playing the FBI agent assigned to bring down the McManus twins.
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The film only opened on a handful of screens in early 2000, with writer-director Troy Duffy saying that theaters were wary of screening a guns-blazing, vigilante justice film so soon after the Columbine School shooting.
The movie eventually became a word-of-mouth hit in the early 2000s, making almost all of its money in the DVD market.
“Boondock Saints” sequel history
The success of “The Boondock Saints” spawned a 2009 sequel “The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day,” which earned $10.6 million at the box office.
Despite the modest returns for “All Saints Day,” discussion of a second “Boondock Saints” sequel has echoed around Hollywood for years. Back in 2015, a “Boondock Saints” TV series was in development, and news of a third movie first popped up in 2021.
Duffy, whose “Boondock Saints” script lifted him out of bartending gigs and into the studio system, will not direct the new sequel, instead working on a series of “Boondock Saints” books.
“I can’t wait for everyone to see what we have long been working toward,” Reedus said, per Deadline. “We are pressing on without our longtime friend and Captain, Troy Duffy on this one. He has decided to write a Boondock Saints book series and I can’t wait to read it.”
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