Edgar Wright says he's been approached about making a sequel to Baby Driver - and thinks he may actually make it. The music-fuelled car chase action-comedy-thriller has been a major hit, giving the director his biggest opening ever and earning rave reviews (it currently sits on 97% on Rotten Tomatoes).
One of the biggest points of praise is how fresh a movie it is in a summer full of sequels, reboots and franchise starters. Baby Driver skirts on genre conventions, but through Wright's distinct filmmaking method emerges as something unique and exciting. However, it may actually end up being the start of its own franchise, if the director's latest comments are anything to go by.
Wright was the guest on the latest Empire Spoiler Special Podcast, where he revealed that Sony wants a Baby Driver 2 and added that he probably has the creative energy and ideas to do so:
"The studio have asked me to think about writing a sequel and it is one of the ones that I might do a sequel to because I think there’s somewhere more to go with it in terms of the characters. Baby has got to a new place."
Wright's never made a sequel before; he reportedly considered one for Shaun of the Dead but in the end decided it worked best by itself. The only "series" to his name is the Cornetto Trilogy, started by Shaun and completed by Hot Fuzz and The World's End, although they're each distinct stories linked only by actors and overall tone. In fact, the director's shown an aversion to this sort of filmmaking before, leaving Ant-Man in part due to the pressures of shared universe filmmaking. As such, this is a pretty bold statement from Wright.
However, while this news is likely going to be hard to swallow for Baby Driver's fans hooked on how different it is, the director certainly seems aware of these concerns and added that he has a specific idea for how to advance the story in a way that doesn't feel tired or repetitive:
"Most sequels you have to contrive something so they go back to square one, unless there’s somewhere deeper for them to go. I think with Baby Driver there’s more that you can do in that realm, and I sort of have an idea that if you did another [film] you would subvert his involvement in the crime in a different way so he’s not the apprentice anymore."
The suggestion there appears to be to have Baby rise up to being his own criminal boss, using everything he learned from Kevin Spacey to start organizing his own heists. That's an almost Terminator 2: Judgement Day-level twist on the original idea, so certainly has exciting potential. That said, it could also undercut the original ending; Wright himself has talked about maintaining an ambiguity around Baby's prison sentence fate, something a direct follow-on would have to address.
Of course, we know very little really about what the film could entail, although Wright did reveal one deleted scene from the first film he'd like to reincorporate:
"Before they got to the post office there was this whole scene set to, believe it or not, a song by Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. And it’s a really funny and quirky sequence and I really liked it in isolation. But as soon as I tried lifting it out of the movie it made so much more sense. It flowed a lot better without it, basically. If I ever do a sequel, I can just reuse the scene as it was a really good scene, but it seemed to interrupt the flow of tension."
That certainly sounds like a pretty striking scene - as Wright says, it's a pretty bold song choice - and is definitely one we'd like to see. While the prospect of a Baby Driver sequel is one met with apprehension, based on everything the director's said he's only going to do it if he can get it right.
Next: What Could Baby Driver Reveal About Edgar Wright’s Cancelled Ant-Man?
Source: Empire
