In some interesting movie-turned-TV news, Warrior writer and director Gavin O’Connor is returning to the world of UFC with a sequel television series. Titled Warriors, the filmmaker has revealed that the show will move away from the central brotherly duo of the movie and instead focus on a new batch of fighters, as well as dealing with social issues which come to affect the main characters.
“So here’s the show; it’s four characters, two men, two women, they’re all fighters, and they’re going to get into Sparta [the competition from Warrior] and will eventually be facing each other and fighting, and I’m going to get an audience supporting the two girls and two guys. So it’s got the DNA of the movie, but the most important part of the show is that it’s not about the fight in the cage. This show is a drama about the fight outside of the cage.”
“What are they fighting for? Fighting your way out of poverty, to save for your family – I want to deal with things that are going on in the world because I have a character that’s in Dublin, Ireland, in Mountjoy prison. There’s a Muslim girl who’s a fighter, who’s living in her Muslim conservative community outside of Paris. She’s a lesbian and a fighter, and in her community neither one of those are permitted. So you have a woman who’s in two closets almost, she’s got to find a way out of two closets. That’s kind of the idea. Do you follow the UFC?”
While the series is seemingly in the early stages, Gavin O’Connor did reveal that one part has already been cast, with retied MMA fighter and former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Light Heavyweight and Heavyweight Champion Daniel Cormier due to step into the cage.
“The one person I’ve cast so far is DC. He’s playing a guy named Bob. He’s playing Bobby Watkins, who lives in Houston and is fighting his way out of poverty for his family.”
Starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, and Nick Nolte, 2011’s Warrior finds Hardy as former Marine Tommy, who returns home and asks his estranged father to train him for a mixed martial arts contest. In true sports movie fashion, the fight has more at stake than just the prize money, with Tommy battling against his own brother, Brendan. While Warrior might sound littered with cliches, it manages to swerve them thanks to a trio of powerful performances, gripping, grounded fight sequences, and some genuine heart.
While Warriors will move away from the Conlon brothers, O’Connor has assured fans that the series will maintain the “spirit” of the critically acclaimed 2011 outing.
“With Lionsgate, I’m going to do Warrior as a TV series. It’s not the movie, so there’s no Conlan family, there’s none of the brothers or dad, there are no characters from the movie. But the show will be in the spirit of the movie. It will be dealing with social issues that are important to me, as there were social issues that were important to me back then that I was dramatizing. There will be characters fighting for something bigger than themselves.”
“We will get the audience to understand and feel deep feelings for the characters before they end up fighting each other, along with the emotional complexity of that. It’s the painful realities of contemporary America I want to deal with. I’m dealing with issues, whether it’s poverty, incarceration, mental health, or addiction; it’s social issues that are important to me that I want to explore in a series, but through different characters.”
So, are you exited to return to glove up once again with Gavin O’Connor for the Warrior sequel? This comes to us courtesy of Discussing Film.