Exclusive: The Revenant 2 In Development, Leonardo DiCaprio Returning
The Revenant 2 is in development to star Leonardo DiCaprio once again as 19th-century frontiersman Hugh Glass.
Filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu is developing The Revenant 2, a sequel to his 2015 pseudo-historical action film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. According to our trusted and proven sources, the Catch Me If You Can actor will return to play Hugh Glass, the real-life 19th-century fur trapper and frontiersman heavily fictionalized in the Academy Award-winning film. The plot of the movie is unclear, but Glass did have many more gruesome adventures after the events portrayed in the first movie, so there is plenty of material for The Revenant 2.
The Revenant 2 will once again feature Leonardo DiCaprio as Glass, presumably some years after the famous 1823 incident in which he hunted down the men who left him to die in the North American wilderness and also got mauled by a grizzly bear in the process. After recovering from his wounds, Glass continued to join expeditions exploring the area now known as the Dakotas, and was eventually killed by members of the Arikara Nation. However, there are undoubtedly many incredibly gruesome, very difficult-to-shoot episodes of violence that could be mined for The Revenant 2.
The Revenant was Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s follow-up film to the Michael Keaton-starring black comedy Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), which won multiple Oscars (including Best Picture) for its portrayal of show business as a difficult field to work in. After the enormously successful, technically demanding movie, Iñárritu pretty much could make anything he wanted, which eventually led to giving Leonardo DiCaprio hypothermia.
The Revenant 2 will follow a movie whose reputation largely rests on the grueling level of punishment it put Leonardo DiCaprio through during filming, in addition to the scores of non-famous crew members are presumably could not use it as fodder for a successful Oscar campaign. In particular, Glass’s survival of a bear attack (which to be fair, seems to have been a mother bear protecting her cubs) was notable for the level of choreography and physical pain it put the actor through.
The first movie was notable for its attempts to portray indigenous culture accurately, hiring several consultants to do so; despite that, at least one scene had a Pawnee character speaking dialogue in an indigenous language spoken thousands of miles away and from an entirely different linguistic group. Additionally, veteran indigenous actor Kimberly Norris-Guerrero (who worked on the film as an uncredited extra) later spoke of the film’s ahistorical depiction of members of the Arikara Nation as perpetually caked in mud and filth as prompting her to begin working as a screenwriter to try to counter such portrayals.
While The Revenant 2 is in development, Leonardo DiCaprio will star in Killers of the Flower Moon, his sixth feature film in collaboration with filmmaker Martin Scorsese. The crime drama centers on the investigation into the murder of several Osage Nation members in Oklahoma in the 1920s. The movie will co-star Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, and Brendan Fraser, and is scheduled to be released in theaters in October.
