We’re going to spoil The Grey for you in this article. If you happened to click in here and haven’t yet seen the Liam Neeson movie, leave now.
Not all movies demand a sequel, no matter how beloved that are. Joe Carnahan’s 2012 thriller The Grey is one of those films, despite periodic calls for a continuation of the story. The stripped-down survival story impressed critics, packed theaters, and continued to build its audience through cable viewings and word-of-mouth DVD sharing. But co-star Frank Grillo candidly admits that he doesn’t understand the call for a sequel, for the obvious reasons.
Frank Grillo kind of started this conversation by recently using the hashtag #TheGrey2 on Instagram. When asked about it by Uproxx, they acknowledge that a sequel virtually is impossible, to which Grillo explained:
Right. Not possible! But what a great joke. [Director] Joe Carnahan is my business partner [in the War Party production company]. We get a lot of people who were profoundly moved by that film, and I think it’s Joe’s best film. So many people ask if there’s gonna be The Grey 2. [Laughs] And I say to them, ‘Did you watch the end of the movie? Nobody made it [out alive].’
Yeah, sorry. I hope you heeded the spoiler warning at the top of the story. The Grey tells the brutal story of a team of oil workers whose plane crashes, stranding the men in the middle of wolf country. Their guide, John Ottway (Liam Neeson), does what he can to keep the men alive, but the elements – and the wolves – gradually overwhelm each character one by one.
Though The Grey has a mildly open-ended conclusion, it’s pretty clear that this film was ending, and had no promise of further adventures for Ottway and his wolves.
And listen, Liam Neeson loves himself a sequel. He popped up in Men In Black: International. He led three Taken movies. If the opportunity presents himself, he’s likely down. But the story doesn’t always have to move forward, and The Grey ended where it should have ended. Leave it alone.
Frank Grillo and Joe Carnahan actually have been trying to get their own thing off the ground. For the past few years, they’ve poured their efforts into a remake of The Raid, a modern classic of action cinema that could look special in the hands of the man behind Narc and Smokin’ Aces. We’d rather they go down that road instead of trying to revive The Grey, but either way, Grillo’s hashtag was pretty damn funny. Even the wolves got a kick out of it.
