"The Shooter" Japanese Theatrical Poster
You may or may not have caught the Mark Wahlberg action-vehicle The Shooter when it landed in theaters back in 2007. The movie came across as something like a Southern-fried spin on The Bourne Identity but it was actually an adaptation of a novel by author Stephen Hunter, who has a whole slew of books about the gun-toting hillbilly named Bobby Lee Swagger.
Now the Hollywood Reporter gives word that New Regency has tapped frequent Luc Besson collaborator Robert Kamen (co-scriptor on The Transporter and Taken) to pen a sequel to The Shooter titled The Sword.
This time around, the story – based on the Stephen Hunter novel titled The 47th Samurai – sees Bobby Lee Swagger traveling to Japan to return a katana his father received during World War II.
A stranger in a strange land, Swagger finds himself besieged by the Yakuza underworld and other shadowy forces when he realizes the katana is actually a priceless relic.
Movies about Westerners fighting the Yakuza seem to be quite popular these days. While Robert Kamen seems like a natural fit for this kind of material, it remains to be seen whether the project will be developed as a true sequel to The Shooter. If Mark Wahlberg chooses not to return to the role of Bobby Lee Swagger, we imagine it won’t be too difficult for the studio to alter the script to fit a new character. After all, how many movies have there been about tough ex-marines who find themselves in over their heads? And John Cena can’t be too busy these days…
Sounds interesting enough, I’d be interested. What did you think of Shooter?
It was a fun movie if you didn’t think about it too much! It was kind of like ‘The Bourne Identity’ by way of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Plenty of action sequences and redneck charm.
“by way of Kentucky Fried Chicken.” LOL! I actually liked this movie a lot. Possibly Antoine Fuqua best flick.
This film is not being made as a sequel to Shooter, it just happens to be an adaptation of another book from the same series – it’s completely unrelated to the earlier film which actually screwed up both the story and it’s main character.
Swagger done properly would have been more like Tommy Lee Jones in The Hunted or a sixty-something Clint Eastwood.