‘Risky Lies’ is a great film, my favorite of all the filmography of James Cameron, which was also a huge box office success. For this reason, it took very little to start talking about the possibility of a sequel, coming to confirm that it would be the filmmaker’s next work after the premiere of ‘Titanic’.
Terrorism stopped being fun
Of course, Cameron was not entirely sure if he wanted to direct it, which did not prevent him from working with jeff eastin, who years later would co-create the series ‘White glove thief’, for the preparation of the script. The idea was that ‘Riskful Lies 2’ premiered in mid-2001 and that both arnold schwarzenegger What Tom Arnold and Jamie Lee Curtis return to interpret the characters that already gave life in the first installment.
After a few short delays, the script was ready in early 2001. Even then it was not clear if Cameron was going to direct it, but it was clear that the film was going to be made. That changed forever with the terrorist attacks of September 11 of that year.although Schwarzenegger went so far as to declare at the beginning of 2002 that it might be a bit delayed, but that the plan was to go ahead with it:
James Cameron finished the script a few months ago, but I’m not sure it will be shot this year. I’m going to be busy for a long time with ‘Terminator 3’ and it’s not my style to jump right into making another movie this big. I like to do one a year at most. We will shoot next year. We have a good script. We’ll have to make a few changes because it deals with certain terrorist themes, but it’s pretty much done.
However, Cameron himself made it clear months later that the project was dead after what happened in September of the previous year: “Terrorism is no longer something you can take as lightly as we did in the first one. I can’t think of how it could be done in the current climate“.
The only one who retained some optimism about it was Schwarzenegger, since Curtis had an impact on the same thing as Cameron. In addition, the actor went into politics for a while, which seemed to completely bury ‘Risky Lies 2’. However, in 2005 a ray of hope came from statements by Schwarzenegger himself saying that he had met with Cameron, Curtis, Bill Paxton and Eliza Dushkaand that filming would begin as soon as he ceased to be Governor of California.
The also protagonist of ‘Predator’ finally remained on the case until January 2011, but two years before it became clear to us that we could forget about ‘Risky Lies 2’, since cameronwho at that time was surely already thinking about ‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’, made it clear that there was no kind of plan to do it.
The project has been dead and buried ever since, only referring to it as a reminder that it would never get done, with Curtis noting in 2019 that “I don’t think we can do another ‘Risk Lies’ after 9/11“. The funny thing is that we may never have a sequel, but we have been working on it for years. a television adaptation that will finally premiere in February 2023. We will see then how much there is of ‘Risky Lies’ beyond its title.
‘Risked lies’ is broadcast tonight on La 1 starting at 10:20 p.m.