The first trailer for Sicario 2: Soldado, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2015 film Sicario, has just dropped and sees Benicio Del Toro’s character significantly escalating tensions.
Soldado is reported to be about C.I.A. agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) “discovering drug cartels smuggling terrorists across the US border” and then teaming up with “former undercover operative Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) to eliminate the problem. Along the way Alejandro revisits his old nemesis to settle scores.”
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According to EW, Brolin has called the film a “more severe” and “much bigger” film than its predecessor. Del Toro added that Sicario was a “really hardcore straight line” and that Soldado “is a little more complicated.”
While Brolin and Del Toro have returned to for the sequel to the critically-acclaimed film, there are a couple of faces not coming back.
First up is Emily Blunt, who played FBI agent Kate Macer in Sicario. Her narrative essentially reached a closing point in the final act of that film so it’s not a big surprise that she won’t be back.
The next absent force from Soldado is director Denis Villeneuve, who went on to direct Arrival in 2015, for which he was nominated for Best Director at the 2017 Academy Awards. After that he helmed Blade Runner 2049, which is likely the reason he couldn’t shoot the Sicario sequel as their productions schedules would likely overlap.
Handling directing duties on Soldado is Italian film and television director Stefano Sollima, and joining the cast are Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice, Shut Eye), Catherine Keener (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Get Out), and Matthew Modine (The Dark Knight Rises, Stranger Things), among others.
Sicario 2: Soldado is scheduled to land in theaters on June 29, 2018.
