Outside of Stardust, in which Robert De Niro plays a cross-dressing pirate, the only good film he has been featured in in the past seven years or so was The Good Shepherd, a film he had a minor role in and directed. He was approaching the film with thoughts of a sequel on the outset, but the relatively slow pace turned most people off leading to mixed reviews, a mere $59+ million at the box-office and about a two-and-a-half month run at the box-office. The birth-of-the-CIA based drama starred Matt Damon and featured the talent of Angelina Jolie, William Hurt, John Turturro, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon, Alec Baldwin, Timothy Hutton and Joe Pesci and still couldn’t manage to make a dent. It doesn’t surprise me considering it is a very slow and methodical film, but in the right frame of mind I think most would really like it, just as I did. Apparently, De Niro still hasn’t dropped the idea of making a second one, as well as a third for that matter.
Variety is reporting from the Karlovy Vary Film Festival where De Niro received a lifetime achievement award while debuting What Just Happened?, a film I understand to be awful based on pretty much all festival reports. While under questioning De Niro discussed how he doesn’t want an actors’ strike as well as brought up the potential for a Good Shepherd trilogy.
De Niro said he would like to make two sequels to CIA Cold War drama “The Good Shepherd” — one bringing the action forward from 1961 to 1989, the other following its hero, Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), up to the present day.
Although he is not working on research for the concluding parts of the hoped-for trilogy, De Niro said being in central Europe offered a good opportunity to begin thinking about the material.
“I had not been planning to do research on that while here, but it is a good idea,” he said.
Based on the quotes I would be willing to bet money that nothing comes of this news. I am basing this on the offhand nature of the quotes and the fact that he says he hasn’t done any research. Perhaps Eric Roth, who penned the first film, has already done all the research needed, but seeing how the article mentions nothing about screenwriters or any kind of production timeline it sounds to me like the 64-year-old actor/director is just talking.
If you are interested in watching De Niro when he didn’t suck get prepped for The Godfather trilogy coming to Blu-ray in September.
