Last October, The A.V. Club reported that John Sayles would be writing the third official entry in the Django saga, and Saturday it was announced that Sayles would also be directing Django Lives!
“Always wanted to make a movie with an ‘!’ in the title,” Sayles tweeted, confirming the news that he would be teaming up with Franco Nero for the further adventures of the Spaghetti Western machine gun slinger who appeared in 1966’s Django and 1987’s Django Strikes Again. According to Showbiz 411, “Django Lives! is set 50 years after the first movie. Django is now a horse handler and an extra on the set of D.W. Griffith’s Birth Of A Nation.” That last element that ads a certain meta sensibility to the film: Django did battle with a gang of Confederate racists in the 1966 original, and Nero’s character working on the crew of a film that portrays the Ku Klux Klan as heroes is sure to end with more than a few people being violently gunned down.
Django Lives! could not only mark a return to Sayles’ exploitation roots (he was a Roger Corman protégé), but possibly breathe a second life into Franco Nero’s career. Who knows—maybe we could even see the return of Angolan Bush War veteran Cole in one of the new Cannon Films’ ninja movies.
No start date has been announced for Django Lives!