Liam Neeson almost got replaced on Taken 2?

A couple of years ago, a surprising number of people showed up to watch Liam Neeson use his particular set of skills to decimate the lowlifes who kidnapped his daughter in TAKEN.

And we’ve been expecting Neeson’s globetrotting asskicker to return for a sequel, which producer Luc Besson has finally been putting together recently.

Turns out there was some problems there — Besson wanted to make the flick later this year, but Neeson wanted to relax for a bit after a marathon of showing up in every third movie that’s gone into production in the past few years. How serious were they each about keeping their schedule?

Well, Deadline claims that Neeson had “all but withdrawn” from the sequel, and Besson was apparently considering going after someone like Mickey Rourke, Ralph Fiennes, Ray Winstone, Sean Bean or Jason Isaacs to replace him.

But don’t worry, things have seemingly been smoothed out, and Neeson will take a vacation after making WRATH OF THE TITANS and then return to punch, shoot, electrocute and generally stomp the guts out of more Euroscum.

Besson and writer Robert Mark Kamen put together the script, and TRANSPORTER 3 director Olivier Megaton will bring us Neeson as he rips shit up.