The Boondock Saints Sequel Finally Greenlit

It’s hard to believe that it was almost six whole years ago that I got to be the first person in the world to announce the upcoming sequel to The Boondock Saints, titled All Saints Day (then titled The Second Coming). It was one of those weird “I can’t believe this is actually happening” situations. Turns out Troy Duffy and I had a friend in common who, when he discovered I was a fan, started telling me about this cool idea for a sequel. One thing led to another and before I knew it I was having hour-and-a-half phone conversations with writer/director Troy Duffy about the movies we loved, our Catholic upbringings and, of course, the sordid, sad history of how his movie The Boondock Saints ended up as a direct-to-video Blockbuster exclusive rather than a big, theatrical blockbuster.

And I was not only thrilled, but honored to be the guy who got to tell the world that the film had done well enough to make a sequel, one we might actually see in theaters.

Of course, for Troy Duffy, the man whose movie career at first came so easily, nothing is ever as easy as it seems: there were delays with the money and backers dropping out. Then the worst of it: a slanderous hatchet job of a documentary titled Overnight, which, while presenting the bitter, unvarnished truth of Duffy’s initial rise and fall (and his enormous, hyper-inflated-by-success ego) left out a few salient details which would make the documentary, you know, completely truthful. That seemed like the nail in the coffin. Especially since Duffy chose the high road and refused to answer questions about the doc, only cementing in the minds of many that it HAD to be the truth. There was no way we were gonna see this movie.

But Duffy refused to give up. Despite offers to direct other films, he rejected them all. He continued to live off of the cult success of his first and only feature and continually plotted the plan of attack for the second. Anyone familiar with the wild, underground success of the original knows what a special little film it is. A classic pass-around movie, The Boondock Saints gained its audience one guy at a time, as friend passed a copy to a friend who passed it to his college buddy who showed it to the guys at work, and so on. What began as a film shunned by the studios soon spread like wildfire and became widely available on DVD (and available at almost any Target or Wal-Mart near you).

So now, after all the success and all the hardship, it is finally happening. We’re finally going to have the sequel almost ten long years later. Will it work? Lord only knows. I know Duffy’s original version of the sequel took place scant months after the original, following the Saints as they encounter copycat branches that are popping up in all the major cities. But with the original cast returning, all of whom are ten years older, I’ve no clue what Duffy has planned for them now. And in a post-9/11, zero-tolerance era can these shotgun slinging superheroes avoid the obvious comparison to law enforcement agencies that these days tend to paint everyone with a very large brush? Can they do the same with audiences?

Troy Duffy’s had a rough go of it. The friends that know him have all told me the same thing -- he’s a changed man that’s learned a lot from his ordeals. He’s no longer that kid that thought he was gonna conquer the world and was more than happy to tell anyone that would listen about how he was gonna do it. He’s come down to earth. And I, for one, am dying to see what kind of Boondocks Saints movie that guy is gonna make. Let’s hope that we’ve seen the last of the drama and can finally see the movie.

C. Robert Cargill - - - Email Me

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