Robert Downey Jr. sent Gerard Butler emails asking for more Olympus Has Fallen sequels

Gerard Butler can be seen in the new action thriller Plane with Mike Colter, and IndieWire reports on the Scotsman’s attraction to old-fashioned, mid-budget, non-franchise action films. While not making Marvel-level properties, or even Fast & Furious-level, Gerard Butler is a lower-key action star who has been consistently putting out audience-pleasing thrill rides. Butler revealed that Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr., emailed the 300 star and begged him for more Olympus Has Fallen films.

“Robert Downey Jr. wrote me the nicest email after Olympus Has Fallen. This is the same vibe. He’s like, ‘We need more of these movies.’ These are the movies when I was in New York as a kid, and people would shout at the screen and throw things and be like, ‘No!’ and applaud and cheer. And I think that’s what this movie is, it’s a throwback to that, where literally you’re in the energy of the group, and everybody’s either terrified or cheering you on,” Butler says.

He continues, “They’re fun. There are reasons that they’ve survived. There are reasons that audiences come out. It’s like you say, it’s a throwback to the ’90s movies where you’re just like, ‘Come on!’ One other thing I got to say about the movie is it has a lot of elements in it. It’s a drama. It’s an action movie, there are survival elements, it’s a disaster movie.”

Olympus Has Fallen was eventually followed by sequels, London Has Fallen and Angel Has Fallen, and it has recently been announced that there is to be a fourth film titled Night Has Fallen. This entry will bring back writer/director Ric Roman Waugh, who has recently helmed Angel Has Fallen and reunited with Butler for the disaster movie, Greenland.

Robert Downey Jr. has stated, “I think our opinions on these matters say a lot about us. I think that we are in a time and place that I unwittingly contributed to, where IP has taken precedence over principle and personality. But it’s a double-edged sword. A piece of IP is only as good as the human talent you get to represent it, and you can have some great IP even if it’s coming from an auteur or a national treasure of a writer-director, and if you don’t have the right kind of artist playing that role, you’ll never know how good it could have been.”