Anna Daniels
Steven Soderbergh‘s High Flying Bird was one of last year’s best movies, featuring a captivating performance from André Holland, playing a sports agent dealing with an NBA lockout. It’s a must-watch movie, but I never expected it to spawn a franchise. But that’s apparently what’s happening, as Holland revealed that there’s a High Flying Bird sequel in the works, and that instead of a lockout, the follow-up might focus on sports being shut down due to the coronavirus.
In High Flying Bird, sports agent Ray Burke (André Holland) “finds himself caught in the face-off between the league and the players” in the midst of an NBA lockout. Steven Soderbergh shot the entire thing on an iPhone 8, because he’s the type of filmmaker who can get away with that sort of thing. I know next to nothing about basketball, but I found the film engrossing primarily due to Holland’s performance, which was nothing short of brilliant. And now the actor might be gearing up to do it again.
During an interview with the Reckon Interview podcast (via Al.com), Holland was asked how his character Ray Burke would be dealing with the current sports shutdown due to coronavirus. “In my imagination, I think Ray would, first of all, want to make sure that his clients are good, right. That everybody’s taken care of financially. Everybody’s fine, you know, families are okay and health-wise,” Holland said. “Now, once that was done, I think that he would probably be using this as an opportunity to try and further level the playing field. For me so much of what the book is about. And what we wanted the movie to be about is this balance of power, labor, and management, who gets to be the one that calls the shots.”
This then lead to Holland revealing that he’s currently in the midst of talks for a High Flying Bird sequel:
“And it’s funny you bring that up because the call I was on earlier and then have a thing later today to talk about this this very thing. We’re working on a sequel to the film. I haven’t told anybody that…but working on that. So yeah, I think hopefully, once we get this made, we’ll be able, I’ll be able to answer that question with a 90-minute movie.”
Holland went on to say that Soderbergh is involved with the sequel, although he stopped short of confirming if the filmmaker was going to return to direct. But the actor did say that “Very early on…before we even like released High Flying Bird, we, we sort of knew we wanted…there was more to do, more to say. And we just wanted to plant the seed with High Flying Bird, but this next thing will actually be more all-encompassing. And even better, I hope.”
Cool Posts From Around the Web: Written by: Slash
