Good news for anyone who's been waiting almost a decade for the “Sicario” trilogy to close out. Josh Brolin, currently out promoting “Whalefall,” tells THR that Steven Knight's script for the third film is the one that finally got all three stars on the same page.
Brolin returns as CIA operator Matt Graver, alongside Benicio del Toro's Alejandro Gillick and, crucially, Emily Blunt's Kate Macer, who was sorely missed in “Day of the Soldado.” Brolin has been teasing this thing since at least May 2022, and as recently as last November, he was saying it felt close. It wasn't. Then, in early October, the pieces suddenly clicked: Knight on script, Padraic McKinley (“The Weight”) directing.
Brolin's explanation for the delay is honest. With three stars each reacting differently to the drafts and filmmakers that came their way, nothing stuck — until Knight.
“Steven Knight wrote a script that was incredible, and it was kind of undeniable. All of us reacted similarly,” he tells THR, adding that they're shooting next year. McKinley and Knight are currently revising the script based on notes from the three stars.
There's a nice irony in Knight being the guy who cracked it. He's also writing the next James Bond film for Denis Villeneuve, the man who made the original “Sicario.” I'm sure Knight has filled Villeneuve in on the details of “Sicario 3.”
Knight's résumé makes him a smart fit for this. He earned an Oscar nomination for writing Stephen Frears' “Dirty Pretty Things,” then penned David Cronenberg's “Eastern Promises,” and wrote and directed “Locke,” which mustered up tension with nothing but Tom Hardy and a car phone. Then there's “Peaky Blinders,” which he built into a global phenomenon.
As for McKinley, I wouldn't sleep on him. His Ethan Hawke-led crime Western “The Weight” is a tough, lean, ’70s-style genre film that suggests he understands this kind of material. It's “Sorcerer” in the woods. The film hits digital October 20.
Villeneuve set a high bar in 2015, and Stefano Sollima's sequel, while not a total disaster, never came close. Getting Blunt back is the single best thing that could've happened here; the first film worked because we saw this world through Kate's eyes. If Knight has given her something real to do, this could be the comeback the franchise needs.
Very sorry to hear about Tom Skerritt's passing today. He was 93. If you grew up watching movies from the '70s and '80s, Skerritt was simply there, the guy with the mustache and those calm eyes.