London Has Fallen Gets A Director

“Olympus Has Fallen” was a big hit last year, getting director Antoine Fuqua back on the director A-List.

But when the time came to put together a sequel, Fuqua got busy, and is currently following up the upcoming “The Equalizer” with “Southpaw.”

That left the director’s chair open for the upcoming sequel, “London Has Fallen,” and now it can be filled.

The Hollywood Reporter is saying that filmmaker Fredrik Bond will be the director of “London has Fallen,” which will feature the continuing adventures of Agent Mike Banning. Gerard Butler returns to essay the Banning role, and he’ll be rejoined by President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and Speaker Trumbull (Morgan Freeman).

There’s also a synopsis for the film, which involves another catastrophe that strikes while the aforementioned trio are in London at the funeral of the recently-deceased Prime Minister. No other details have been revealed.

Could the Prime Minister secretly be controlling things from the grave? The current script is penned by Christian Gudegast. Butler’s expected to shoot the film soon before shifting into “Geostorm” early next year. That’s a pretty action-heavy period for the “300” star.

Fredrik Bond has been mentioned as a contender for jobs as diverse as “Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” and this blockbuster sequel. Known for helming music videos, Bond made his debut with “Charlie Countryman,” the 2013 romantic thriller starring Shia LaBeouf.

That film followed a vacationing American as he became involved with the wrong girl and a host of gangsters. It’s the sort of film festival movie that throws everything into the story, overcome with quirk, magical realism, and intrusive soundtrack choices.

To Bond’s credit, it has a bold, stupid, youthful energy that is missing from most big studio films, suggesting that Bond has plenty to offer in the mainstream film world. It’s also the sort of feature that feels as if it was messed with in post, re-edited and reworked to within an inch of its life to make some sort of linear sense that ultimately proves unsatisfying.

Sometimes it’s better to stop making sense. “London Has Fallen” starts filming this October, and is expected to arrive for an October 2, 2015 release date.