Folks all over the world who went out to see Taken 2 this weekend have themselves to thank for assuring another sequel. Robert Mark Kamen, co-writer of the first two films with Luc Besson, has said that Taken 3 is in the works after the $49.5-million domestic take of this weekend and the $122-million worldwide gross to date.
In an interview with Hollywood.com, Kamen said they were going to wait to see the box-office numbers before committing to a second sequel:
"We didn't start talking about [Taken 3] until we saw the numbers, but then we said, 'Oh, okay. I think we should do a third one.' And Fox wants us to do a third one." This bit of news comes after star Liam Neeson told Empirea couple weeks ago that he didn't see Taken 3 happening:
"I don't think it's going to happen. I really don't. I can't see a possible scenario where audiences wouldn't go, 'Oh, come on...! She's taken again?'"
Whether Neeson's thoughts on the matter would keep him from signing on for Taken 3 is another matter. Certainly if the paycheck is big enough, there's no reason to imagine Neeson would say no, though you'd hope he would at least want to see the script to make sure whatever he was agreeing to wasn't total crap.
The interview with Kamen noted how all the Mills family characters have been "taken" to this point, to which the writer responded:
"We've taken everyone we can take — it's going to go in another direction. Should be interesting."
Here's your classic situation of money talks. Hopefully Kamen and Besson have some decent story in mind and won't just completely wing it, but based on how Taken 2 turned out, we wouldn't be too sure.
As for where the story could go, here are some ideas (*SPOILERS* ahead):
At the end of Taken 2 you'll recall the confrontation between Neeson's Bryan Mills and the Albanian father crime boss character played by Rade Serbedzjia. Mills says that if he kills them all, their families will still come after him, so Mills gives him a chance to end the cycle of revenge/violence by letting him go. He chooses to try and shoot Mills in the back, angering Mills, who kills him.
So if Mills was right, more angry Albanians will come after him. At this point, you'd imagine they might try coming to Los Angeles to find him and kill him, but the whole abduction angle seems unlikely and trite at this point.
