Face/Off sequel: Adam Wingard wants to make it like ‘a lost John Woo movie’

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

As director Adam Wingard's monster mash Godzilla vs. Kong reaches theatres and the HBO Max streaming service today, the filmmaker is already working on the screenplay for another high profile project with his frequent collaborator Simon Barrett (You're Next, The Guest). Wingard and Barrett are writing, and Wingard will be directing, a "direct sequel" to John Woo's 1997 sci-fi action classic Face/Off (watch it HERE), and during a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter the director confirmed that he will be attempting to emulate Woo's signature style on this project.

Wingard said, 

The whole reason why I want to do this movie is the experiment of it. I want to make a film that feels like it’s a lost John Woo movie. I want to do the irresponsible violence of some of those John Woo movies. I want to capture the sincerity of those Hong Kong films and what he brought to Face/Off. I think Face/Off is John Woo’s second best film. I think The Killer is unbeatable; it’s one of the best films ever made. But Face/Off is actually pretty close because he does all of his signatures… Maybe there’s parts of Broken Arrow that work in this way, but I don’t like Broken Arrow that much. Face/Off is just this perfect mixture of action, comedy and drama. It’s a very funny movie, and that’s one of the things I want to bring to it as well. 

Simon and I are in the final phases of our first draft of the script and we’re so thrilled. It’s such a funny read. The characters jump off the page, and the action is just out of this world. But what’s exciting about it to me is channelling John Woo because this is really an homage to him. We haven’t gotten a good John Woo movie in a long time, and obviously, he’s his own person and I’ll never be able to make a John Woo movie. But I want to do something that feels like it’s the John Woo-verse, you know what I’m saying? (Laughs.) It feels like it maybe isn’t him, but it has his signatures and vibes. So I think that’ll be really fun for me as a filmmaker and as an experiment, but I think audiences are totally clamoring for it. (Laughs.)"

One of the many famous moments from Face/Off involves Nicolas Cage's character trying to seduce a woman by saying, "I can eat a peach for hours." So Wingard was asked if the word "peach" is in the script. His response:

Oh my God, I have to be honest with you. Simon and I did our initial pass a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve been tweaking it since then. I’ve also been rewatching Face/Off every couple of weeks and just making sure, like, “Okay, is there something that I should be thinking about or am not remembering?” And to be honest with you, we did a “peach” pass on the movie because we realized that we didn’t really have that in there. I was like, “You have to have this reference.” So, yeah, it comes up, and it’s so funny that you mentioned that. (Laughs.)"

It has been reported that Cage and his Face/Off co-star John Travolta are interested in returning for the sequel, but their involvement will depend on how they react to the script when Wingard and Barrett turn it in.

Scripted by Mike Werb and Michael Colleary, the original Face/Off centered on 

FBI agent Sean Archer. He is so obsessed with catching a homicidal sociopath named Castor Troy, who is responsible for killing the fed’s son, that the agent undergoes facial transplant surgery and takes the mug of his nemesis so he can be sent to prison to find out a bomb’s whereabouts and stop an attack. The plan goes awry when the bad guy wakes up and takes the face of the FBI agent. Soon, the new-faced Castor visits the agent with the villainous face and takes glee in taunting him, telling him that the face surgeons have been killed, that the good guy is stuck looking in the mirror at the face he hates most, and that the villain is going home to bed his wife and take over his home life. It escalates into a series of choreographed action sequences. 

Neal Moritz will be producing Wingard's Face/Off, with David Permut executive producing.