Christian Gudegast has had to wait a lot of years to get both movies made, but the director feels confident about a third one.
Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is kicking off the year as 2025’s first number-one movie. It’s also Lionsgate’s first box office topper in over a year. The heist film reportedly made a $15.5 million gross on opening weekend. It opened in line with the 2018 original (not adjusted for inflation). It likely would have performed even better were it not for the horrific wildfires currently decimating large parts of Los Angeles. The movie marks Gerard Butler’s strongest opening since Angel Has Fallen back in 2019.
As the first film became a modest hit (which would collect more fans later in its release life) and got a sequel, could a third movie be in the books for this franchise? Christian Gudegast, the writer and director of both the first and second, says so. And this is despite the hardships that come from making these movies. When he spoke to The Hollywood Reporter, he was inquired about if he would pitch a threequel to the studio and Gudegast revealed, “It’s already pitched. It’s already done. We’re ready to go.” When the first two movies suffered long-gestating developments that were out of its control, THR asked if they should knock on wood so that it would be greenlit. Gudegast responded, “We’re feeling very good about it. But, sure, knock on wood. It doesn’t hurt.”
The hardships that came with the development of the movies meant it would be 15 years until the first film hit the big screen and seven years for the sequel. For Pantera, Gudegast explained, “We were ramping up to start, but then Covid hit. We were just about to ramp up again after coming out of Covid, but then we had a bad injury to one of our leads [Gerard Butler]. So that was another nine or ten months, and then we were probably going to go shoot it in Croatia and Serbia. But then the war with Ukraine hit, and we had to move out of that zone because everyone from the Ukraine went down to where we were going to shoot it. There were literally no hotels or Airbnbs available to house the crew. Then, we went to France, but the exchange rate changed and the tax credit in France didn’t work. Ultimately, we ended up in Tenerife. So we had many, many hurdles, production-wise, and that was really the challenge.”
