A New Director Seizes The Taken Sequel

 "Where is this girl... again?"

Taken was such a massive, out-of-nowhere, surprise kick to the head on an otherwise inauspicious January weekend in ’09, everybody's still seeing stars over it. Seriously, how many posters and trailers have you seen where the taglines compare the movie to Taken or proclaim it to be by somebody even peripherally involved in the movie?

Some have questioned how you could make a sequel to this mean, mean actioner. I always thought it’d be easy. I picture a sequel, titled Taken Again,  that’d pick up the next summer with Liam Neeson’s daughter following, say, Coldplay’s South American tour by herself, because she didn't learn a damn thing in the first movie. Neeson would balk at it again, and they’d guilt him into agreeing to it again, and she’d get kidnapped again, and he’d have to kill everybody to go save her again… you’d get the idea. It just writes itself. (And Maggie Grace was recently signed on to star in the sequel, as well, making all this at least somewhat possible.)

Whether my brilliant idea gets actualized or not, Taken 2 (Taken Too maybe?) is moving ahead, for sure. Variety says that the complicated international distribution rights have been hashed out and Olivier Megaton will grab the director’s chair in place of Pierre Morel. Megaton’s already a Team Besson player, having directed the Transporter 3 and, just recently, Colombiana, a revenge flick Zoe Saldana’s starring in with a script by, you guessed it, the writers of Taken.