The Boondock Saints are returning to their righteous vigilante ways. Deadline reports that director Troy Duffy is teaming up once again with actors Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery for a third film that follows the twin Irish brothers on a mission to kill criminals and evildoers.
The script is being written by series creator Duffy, along with Flanery, and with input from Reedus. Filming will begin next May, when Flanery completes work on Amazon's The Boys and when Reedus completes work on The Walking Dead's final season. Producing Boondock Saints 3 will be Shaun Redick (Get Out, Black KkKlansman) and Yvette Yates Redick.
The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day released back in 2009, a whole decade after the original. When we last visited the MacManus brothers, they were imprisoned after surviving a deadly ambush by hired hitmen. It's later revealed that Willem Dafoe's Special Agent Smecker, originally thought to have died sometime between the events of the first two films, is secretly in hiding and aiding the Saints with their mission. Boondock Saints 3 will pick up from there.
Specific plot details about Boondock Saints 3 remain a mystery, but producer Yvette Yates Redick suggests that even people who've never watched the first two will be "blown away" by the third.
Duffy's last project was in fact The Boondock Saints 2, and production on the sequel has reportedly been troubled over the years. Flanery originally tweeted in 2017 that he and Reedus were no longer working on Boondock Saints 3 due to disagreements, but at some point Flanery and Duffy reconnected and began working on a new script.
Duffy stated that the sequel will shift focus away from Boston mafia villains to corrupt politicians.
“Where we’re going is, the brothers are older,” Duffy said. “They are coming out into a brand new world that is not like the one they left. They are at odds. One wants to continue, the other doesn’t. There’s a new enemy out there, not like the traditional ones they’ve faced. That’s the thing that is timely about this one.”
The original Boondock Saints films was a notorious box office failure, partially due to unfortunate timing alongside the Columbine high school shooting, which left 12 students and one teacher dead. With gun violence newly in Americans' minds, a particularly violent and gunridden film like Boondock Saints failed to gain traction with media executives.
Though it failed spectacularly at the box office and received a 28% on Rotten Tomatoes, its subsequent DVD release saw it skyrocket to cult classic status. Deadline reports that the hope with Boondock Saints 3 is to build a far-reaching cinematic franchise ala John Wick.
Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/boondork saint for IGN.