SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Den of Thieves 2: Pantera. If you’ve yet to watch the buddy heist film, please proceed with caution.
The 2025 movie schedule is in full swing, and we've already seen some winners like Den of Thieves 2: Pantera paly for audiences. Critics, too, had great things to say about the buddy heist film, especially when it came to the dynamic shared by Gerard Butler’s Nick “Big Nick” O’Brien and O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s Donnie Wilson and how it evolved. Now that Den of Thieves 3 is happening, it sounds like that relationship could be changing once again.
I recently sat down with Christian Gudegast, the writer and director of the Den of Thieves movies to talk about everything from the home release of Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, now available on PVOD to the franchise’s future. During that chat, I made sure to ask him just how things are going to change for the two main characters now that Donnie is working with the mafia and Big Nick is essentially a wanted criminal:
It is going to evolve quite a bit. I don't wanna talk about too much, but they're now going to go on a completely different [path], there's going to be a little bit of a role reversal in the sense that Donnie's probably going to become a little bit tired, because they're really going to be on the run. Now we're gonna go into a whole different world of heists, not money, not cash, not diamonds, a whole different world. It becomes increasingly more sort of geopolitical and the players involved go up to a higher level, more danger, etc. Donnie’s going to grow a little bit weary of it all.
As you may recall --I said there would be spoilers -- Den of Thieves 2: Pantera ended with Donnie being broken out of jail (with the help of Big Nick) by the mafia after the Pantera game is arrested for their part in the diamond heist and impressive chase sequence. Now working for the Octopus organization, it sounds like Donnie will working his way up the food chain, as Gudegast put it.
But what about Big Nick O’Brien and all his cigarettes? What’s he going to be up to? Well, as Gudegast put it to CinemaBlend, he’s going to be exploring a new stage in his life that’s like nothing that came before:
And then Nick is, just now, for the first time, feeling that thrill of being this wanted criminal. And he's chased them his whole life now, suddenly he is that guy. And in Den 2, we played him kind of going back and forth. And in Den 3, he's going be kind of all in. And then what that does to their dynamic. And then also just personally, they're going to be going through different things.
Gudegast also alluded to both Nick and Donnie going through some more personal things when Den of Thieves 3 picks up with their stories. He didn’t give too much away, but by the sounds of it, this could be a major jump in both Nick and Donnie’s dynamic and the story as a whole.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens with Big Nick and Donnie down the road. For now, we can always go back and revisit Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, which is available on PVOD and will be on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD on March 4, 2025, from Lionsgate.
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