Director Guy Ritchie achieved critical and financial success with his crime films ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ in 1998, which was quickly followed up by in 2000 by ‘Snatch’. The films were both extremely tight with excellent scripts including well written dialogue, captivating characters and interesting plots set in the criminal underworld.
Several years later in 2008, Ritchie brought ‘RocknRolla’ to the big screen, this film was reminiscent of his earlier films and while good, didn’t quite reach the heights of ‘Lock, Stock’ or ‘Snatch’. That said ‘RocknRolla’ does feature a great cast including Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Strong and Tom Hardy.
At the end of ‘RocknRolla’ there is a closing title card which states “Johnny, Archy, and the Wild Bunch will be back in The Real RocknRolla” indicating Ritchie had at least one sequel in mind. Almost four years later and obviously no sequel has eventuated, but since then the director has been busy working on his new ‘Sherlock Holmes’ franchise starring Robert Downy Jnr and Jude Law.
It has recently been reported that a sequel to ‘RocknRolla’ is still on Ritchie’s mind, with the comment that a script has been written for the sequel but that the time hasn’t been available in recent years to go into production on it.
With the first ‘Sherlock Holmes’ sequel about to hit screens later this month, will there be an opportunity for Ritchie to move into production on ‘The Real RocknRolla’? Hard to say, though he is currently attached to direct ‘The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’ so we’ll have to wait and see.
