The Eastern Promises sequel is getting ready to film in March
According to Consequence Of Sound, a casting notice has recently materialized for Body Cross, the long-in-the-works sequel to David Cronenberg’s London-set Russian mobster movie Eastern Promises. Released in 2007, the original earned an Oscar nomination for star Viggo Mortensen and remains a high-water mark for screenwriter Steven Knight, who has since gone into the Tom Hardy business as the creator of BBC series Peaky Blinders, co-creator of Taboo, and writer-director of Locke. Knight has been trying to get the Body Cross script made for years, and is reportedly helming the film. At one point, Cronenberg was attached to direct the sequel.
The casting notice, which appeared on the site myentertainmentworld.com under the listing Body Cross (aka Eastern Promises 2), offers a synopsis (spoilers for a decade-old film follow):
The sequel picks up where the 2007 film left off—with the incompetent underboss Kirill thinking that he and his henchman driver Nikolai really have inherited the throne from his crime-lord father, without knowing that Nikolai is actually a clandestine agent working undercover in Russia’s federal security service.
Viggo Mortensen and Vincent Cassel will presumably reprise their roles as Nikolai and Kirill, respectively. Both actors have been on board with the project since the start of the decade. March is listed as the start date for filming, which will take place in London.