David Cronenberg’s East­ern Promis­es is get­ting a sequel

David Cronenberg’s bril­liant and bru­tal crime-thriller, East­ern Promis­es, is set for a sequel despite the direc­tor claim­ing back in 2012 that no such fol­low-up would be. The script for the new film is cur­rent­ly list­ed under the work­ing title ​‘Body Cross’, hav­ing report­ed­ly been com­plet­ed two years ago by writer and direc­tor Steven Knight, whose cred­its include the BBC series Peaky Blind­ers and Taboo, as well as the first East­ern Promis­es. With film­ing sched­uled to begin in Lon­don in March, it now seems that Knight will final­ly be bring­ing the project to life.

Lit­tle is known about the plot, but a short syn­op­sis post­ed on cast­ing data­base site sug­gests that we can look for­ward to more of the same: ​“Pick­ing up where the 2007 film left off with the incom­pe­tent under­boss Kir­ill think­ing that he and his hench­man dri­ver Niko­lai 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.”

The orig­i­nal, star­ring Nao­mi Watts, Vig­go Mortensen as Niko­lai and Vin­cent Cas­sel as the sleazy and petu­lant Kir­ill, is one of our all-time favourite Cro­nen­berg films. Com­plete with the director’s trade­mark vis­cer­al inten­si­ty, it draws the view­er in to the depraved mas­cu­line under­world of the Lon­don Russ­ian mob, which makes the Sopra­nos look almost saint­ly by com­par­i­son. Mortensen in par­tic­u­lar is aston­ish­ing, his per­for­mance per­haps best remem­bered for the stag­ger­ing­ly bloody bath­house fight in which his char­ac­ter is ambushed by Chechen assassins.

There’s been no con­fir­ma­tion as to whether or not Cro­nen­berg will be involved in this sequel in some way. But hav­ing made his direc­to­r­i­al debut with the impres­sive­ly taut 2013 thriller Locke, we can safe­ly assume that the film is safe in Knight’s hands. He’s cer­tain­ly appears con­fi­dent that East­ern Promis­es 2 will more than live up to the orig­i­nal – in a 2014 inter­view with Indiewire Knight teased, ​“the script for the sec­ond is much bet­ter than the first.” We can’t wait.