Norman Reedus Dropped an Update on ‘The Boondock Saints 3’

©Courtesy of Twenty Century Fox via Disney

The Boondock Saints 3, the third installment in a series originally released in 1999, is currently in development though no release date has yet been revealed. It will serve as a sequel to The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day, which came out in 2009.

At the time of its release some 25 years ago, the original film was panned for its excessive violence, the blandness of its characters, and its awkward comic scenes in the midst of the gunplay. Neither it nor its 2009 sequel fared well at the box office or on critical platforms like Rotten Tomatoes.

Directed by Troy Duffy, the two Boondock Saints films, starred Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery as the gun-toting Catholic MacManus brothers who become vigilantes while taking on the Boston Mafia. The two movies have become cult classics despite their poor critical reception; each had a stronger presence on home video than in theaters.

Few details are known about The Boondock Saints 3, though Norman Reedus was quoted on ScreenRant as saying that Murphy and Connor MacManus, the two protagonists, will set the plot in motion by breaking out of prison. “There’s sort of a rough outline of a script,” said Reedus. “The opening sequence, I think they’re keeping from that rough outline because it’s crazy. It’s crazy. It’s basically the boys breaking out of prison. That’s how it starts.”

Reedus is set to appear this summer in the second series of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon and is also attached to Ballerina, a John Wick spinoff.

Some critics have suggested that the planned third installment can redeem past missteps by paying more attention to the screenplay. Brandon Zachary wrote on ScreenRant that “Boondock Saints 3 could improve on both films by focusing more on developing a straightforward story that gives the films’ memorable approach to pitch-black comedy more room to shine. … A tighter focus [on] the central characters, reflective of the acting chops both Flanery and Reedus have displaced elsewhere, could make it more palatable to critics.”