After sending shivers down the spines of moviegoers with last year’s suspenseful thriller The Housemaid, director Paul Feig is ready to trade dark, twisty secrets for high-stakes action. According to Deadline, Feig is officially plotting a follow-up to the 2003 crime caper The Italian Job for Paramount Pictures. While the studio is currently assembling a dedicated writers’ room to crack the story, no acting talent is attached to the project just yet.
The 2003 iteration of The Italian Job, directed by F. Gary Gray, was itself a sleek, modern remake of the classic 1969 British thriller starring Michael Caine. In Gray’s action-packed film, after being betrayed and left for dead during a job in Venice, clever master thief Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg) assembles his core team for an elaborate gold heist targeting their former ally. The film’s stellar ensemble cast featured Charlize Theron, Edward Norton, Jason Statham, Seth Green, Mos Def, and Donald Sutherland, creating a fan-favorite hit fueled by iconic, high-speed Mini Cooper chases.
Gray’s remake grossed an impressive $176 million worldwide, providing Feig with enough momentum to get the green light to revisit the property. Besides, who doesn’t love a genuinely great heist movie? The genre thrives on charismatic antiheroes, meticulous planning, and breathless execution. If Paramount puts the right creative team together in the writers’ room, we could easily end up with a whip-smart, fun script that delivers on the high-octane fun and demands a full franchise sequel.
Feig’s plate is certainly full in the meantime. He is currently hard at work on the sequel to The Housemaid, titled The Housemaid’s Secret, starring Sydney Sweeney, Kirsten Dunst, Brittany Snow, and Stephen Kalyn. Based on Freida McFadden’s best-selling novel, this next chapter follows Millie (Sweeney) as she takes a new housekeeping job for a mysterious woman she is strictly forbidden from seeing—until she uncovers what lies behind a locked door, revealing secrets far darker than her own.
Also on the horizon, Feig is serving as an executive producer on Richard Burgin’s The Slaughter Brothers Dime Circus. This bizarrely intriguing project is a horror musical set in a crumbling sideshow, featuring Lynne Griffin and Sean Sullivan, in which a charismatic ringmaster gets caught in a twisted battle between a predatory clown and a young snake charmer out for revenge. Feig continues to prove his range, and an Italian Job follow-up might just be his most exciting move yet.