When the first trailer for Paul W.S. Anderson's "Death Race" hit in June, the director found himself besieged by a plethora of questions, which he dutifully answered in a chat with MTV News.
Now Anderson has a question for those very same fans: "How would you like your 'Death Race 2'?"
Although nothing official has been announced, and everything depends so very much on how "Death Race" does when it opens Friday, a sequel is already being sketched out, Anderson and stars Tyrese Gibson and Jason Statham revealed.
"It's a movie that would definitely lend itself to seeing further adventures," Anderson insisted.
"I'm the sequel master! I just did 'Transporter 3' and 'Crank 2,' " Statham laughed. "Let's do 'Death Race 2'! I had a terrific time working with this group of people. Paul's terrific. If they want to make another one, then I'm in."
In many ways, actually, the sequel for Anderson's "Death Race" has already been scripted, filmed and released, the director stressed. If you missed the announcement, though, don't worry — you probably weren't alive.
"We did the movie that is the beginning of [Roger Corman's original 'Death Race 2000'], the genesis of the death race that is portrayed in that [1975] film," Anderson told MTV News in June. "If you watch this movie, you can imagine how that would develop into what Roger portrayed."
Anderson's referring to the fact that in the original, participants joined a cross-country road-rage-a-thon, gunning to make it to the finish line first. Anderson's "Death Race," by comparison, pits prisoners against each other for the benefit of a pay-per-view audience. It doesn't spill over into the general population.
"But there are aspects to the first movie that we haven't really addressed in this movie," Anderson added more recently, when MTV News caught up with the director at Comic-Con. "For example, in the first movie, you run people down for points. In this movie, certainly lots of people get run down, you just don't score points. If we did do another movie, I would like to address that. If this develops into a franchise, it would be slowly building towards what Roger's movie was. It feels like that movie actually takes place about 20 years after the events of this movie."
(Spoiler alert: Ending given away ahead!)
Anderson's "Death Race" actually concludes on a very open-ended note, with Statham's Jensen, Gibson's Ames and Natalie Martinez's Case alive and well and living in Mexico after the conclusion of their first race. The two leading men, who Anderson called "the new Butch and Sundance," have come to an uneasy truce after being rivals for most of the flick. Their friendship is a tenuous one, though, that could easily lead to them gunning each other down once again.
Actually, count on it, Gibson said.
"I think me and Jason is gonna get along for a certain period, but we're gonna end up having another conflict [in the sequel]," Gibson said. "I look forward to fight scenes with Jason, 'cause I don't think nobody is really gonna believe he can whoop my ass."
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