Wanted star James McAvoy would love to return for a sequel and see what his character, meek office worked-turned master assassin Wesley Gibson, is up to now. In a recent interview, the actor was asked which characters he would most like to revisit, with McAvoy quick to mention that he would jump at the chance to see what became of Wesley, something which will no doubt have fans calling for Wanted 2.
“I always fancied seeing what happened to Wesley Gibson in the movie, Wanted.”
Loosely based on the comic book miniseries of the same name by Mark Millar and J. G. Jones, Wanted was released in 2008, and centers around Wesley Gibson, played by McAvoy, a frustrated account manager who discovers that he is the son of a professional assassin. His father was once part of a secret organisation of assassins, the Fraternity, and Gibson is drawn into this mysterious, violent underworld, joining the secret society and battling his panic attacks and anxiety to learn the tools of the trade.
Directed by Timur Bekmambetov and written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas, and Chris Morgan, and co-starring Angelina Jolie as Fox, an accomplished member of the Fraternity who mentors Wesley and Morgan Freeman as Sloan, leader of the Fraternity and former partner of Mr. X, Wanted bears little resemblance to the comic book on which it’s based, but was met with generally favorable reviews thanks to its fast pacing, stylized action sequences and the performances of James McAvoy, Freeman and Jolie.
McAvoy is certainly not alone in wondering what Wesley has been up to since the bullet-curving finale of the first Wanted, with audiences having wanted (get it?) a sequel to the movie for quite some time. In fact, a follow-up has been discussed on-and-off over the years, with Mark Millar announcing around the fitst movie’s release that director Timur Bekmambetov was planning a Wanted 2. McAvoy himself revealed in 2011 that “the studio is keen to make it, and we really want to make it, but we want to make it if it’s right and when it’s right, and that might not be ever.”
Universal later brought Wanted screenwriters Michael Brandt and Derek Haas in to pen the script for the sequel, with Haas describing the plot as picking up “right after the events that just happened; it’ll pick up Wesley a few years later and go back in for another round”, while also revealing that the sequel would be “Fox-less and loom-less,” meaning that Jolie would not have been resurrected.
The Wanted lead is not the only character that McAvoy would like to bring back though, with the actor also saying that he would consider being unleashed once again as the boozing, drug-abusing, scheming, manipulative, misanthropic detective Bruce “Robbo” Robertson in a Filth sequel. “I loved Bruce Robertson in Filth, but I feel like I exorcized him out of me a little bit. I don’t know if I needed to revisit him, but I don’t know, maybe I would,” the actor explained.
So, is it time for Wanted 2 to explode onto screens? Or should Wesley Gibson be left alone? This comes to us courtesy of Screen Rant.