Director Shawn Levy has recently made headlines by taking over the reins of the video game adaptation film Uncharted. However, he says that his the questions that he is most asked by fans is whether or not we might ever get a sequel to his robot boxing movie Real Steel. While there are no definitive plans to produce a follow-up to the Hugh Jackman vehicle, Levy says that he has an idea that might lead to a sequel, if he could just find a script that works.
One area that I still would love to explore is that notion of how was Atom built? What is it about his design that might have embedded some artificial or organic intelligence and consciousness, such that he is self-aware to some extent? All I'll say is, we've attempted it a few times with a number of writers, and no draft got me, Hugh, and Steven all there to a yes in the same moment. It all felt like it wasn't quite enough to promise a new story and a new movie.
2011's Real Steel wasn't a huge smash in North America, but it put up solid numbers internationally, which resulted in a 2011 box office of nearly $300 million. The movie told the story of Hugh Jackman as a down on his luck ex-fighter who makes his living in a futuristic world by hustling robot boxing fights. The science fiction elements weren't the film's real focus, however, as it was much more a personal story about the growing relationship between Jackman's character, and the son that didn't know he had, who of course is an expert at repairing robots.
Shawn Levy's comments to Collider fall in line with what he said a couple of years ago. At that point, he called the development of Real Steel 2 "ongoing" which appears to simply mean that it's a film they're interested in making if at any point they can figure out how to make it. It would seem that Levy, Hugh Jackman, and producer Steven Spielberg are all on board if they can find a fresh take on the subject to bring them back to that world.
Real Steel currently sits on Rotten Tomatoes with a 59% score, so it wasn't overly loved by critics, though it clearly wasn't universally panned either. Our own review was that the movie needed to be trimmed down a bit, but that it did have some really great parts to it that could have made the film great if they had been the focus of the movie. Ultimately the script had problems, so it would be vital that any sequel starts with a solid script.
Would you like to see a Real Steel 2 in the theaters? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
