The Old Guard 2 – The Creative Life of Liz

It’s taken 421 days. A bunch of unofficial announcements. A disappointing bait and switch during a weeklong press event. A twitter and tumblr takeover.

Yesterday, at 10:15 AM PST, Netflix finally officially announced the sequel.

I’ll be honest, I really wasn’t expected to hear anything until next month, as just yesterday Netflix announced a three hour fan event called Tudum. I’d assumed we’d hear something at that point. After all, The Old Guard was listed on the official list twice. And since Charlize Theron was in the teaser video as well, I had hope.

But I guess the Powers That Be finally heard us, and they teamed up with Deadline to officially announce the sequel… and something else.

So, within all the hype of the announcement, it took us fans a moment to notice something about the tweet. We have a new director. Seriously, I don’t think anyone actually noticed for like ten minutes.

Gina Prince-Bythewood has stepped aside to let someone else helm the sequel.

Now, I’m not pissed about this. Prince-Bythewood did such an amazing job with adapting the source material. She advocated for so much, including the van speech and also to give Nile her voice in the film. She pushed so hard every step of the way, including making sure that the post production team was more than 80% female, which is basically unheard of in Hollywood. It looks like there was a scheduling conflict that caused her to have to step back as director, though she still remains as a producer.

Victoria Mahoney has signed on to direct the sequel.

Up until yesterday, I only knew of her because of her making Star Wars history when she was handpicked by J.J. Abrams to direct the second unit on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, making her the first woman to do so. She has directed episodes of some of the most popular and high profile shows on television, including Grey’s Anatomy and Lovecraft Country. But I’m okay with this. She seems to know her way around a camera, and how to direct for both the silver screen, and the small screen.

Prince-Bythewood seems to have been the one to handpick her replacement. Or, at least heavily recommend her.

And there’s this other thing. I’m not exactly worrying about this person taking over. A friend on Twitter happened to be looking back on some of her tweets (she’s friends with Ava DuVernay, so plus one) and discovered that she watched The Old Guard right after it premiered… and she got it. She got everything that the film was trying to say.

I think we’re in good hands.

On the flip side, we also got the news that the entire cast would be returning! I’m actually really excited about this. The cast has remained on friendly terms (at least from what we’ve seen from social media), and I’m hopeful that will continue.

The only real wonder any of us have right now is that we don’t exactly know when filming will start. The thing is, all of the cast is involved in multiple projects. Currently, production is scheduled to begin during the first quarter of 2022, which would make a realistic premier timeframe of winter 2022, or Spring 2023, depending on postproduction.

All in all, I’m very excited that finally, we have the confirmation from Netflix themselves that this is happening. And now the fans can cheer on the cast and crew every step of the way.

Until next time!

Yeah… I knew this would happen.

On Tuesday, I woke up early, deciding to pull a joke while on stream. I took this lovely letter board sign I received from January’s Owlcrate and made a sign.

I’d planned to change the sign every stream, and make it something I would show off every stream. Because honestly, I was willing to do almost anything to get this film green lit.

Anyway, as I finished off the sign, the Old Guard discord I’m apart of (Immortal Disasters) started blowing up. And for a pretty good reason too.

A small entertainment news site called “The Illuminerdi” was reporting that The Old Guard sequel was confirmed.

Now, after we all celebrated for like ten minutes, someone on the Discord pointed out that the site wasn’t exactly the most reliable. So… it was probably fake. Which we all knew, of course. We’ve just been so desperate to have the sequel green lit that we’ve started celebrating whenever TOG gets a damn mention, forget about lies about the sequel.

After we all calmed down a bit, we all started scouring the internet for a reliable source. In fact, we spent the next 36 hours doing just that. I was even checking during my Tuesday stream, during cutscenes. I showed off my sign during the stream, in the fleeting hope that showing it off would tell the Powers That Be that we would love the damn sequel.

So. Wednesday.

It was mid-afternoon here in California. I was just minding my own business at about 4:30pm, trying to finish the post that went up way late for this blog, when my phone lit up with a message from discord. (I have my notifications set to pop only when it’s on certain channels, or when I’m pinged. Because otherwise, my phone would never stop lighting up.) So I took a five minute break and clicked on it.

Someone happened to be digging through a publication called Production Weekly. Not through the actual pages (which would have cost like $75), but through the summary that is publicly available. Basically, it just lists all projects listed inside the publication. They’d come across the issue dated for yesterday, January 28th.

And there it was, about three quarters of the way down the page. Right after Obi-Wan Kenobi. In plain, capital letters.

The Old Guard Chapter Two: Force Multiplied.

Hey guys, it’s a primary source. We all flipped.

So, yeah, it’s confirmed. And then someone was amazing enough to pay for the issue, so we got more information then just “Hey this exists!”

It is in ACTIVE DEVELOPMENT. By that, it means that all the contracts are signed and we’re in pre-production. Basically, that means that the script is being worked on, casting is commencing, and probably costuming and well, everything but actually shooting the film. Oh, and we got the quick summary (which is as expected). (We all still want the title to be 2 Old 2 Guard, but alas, stupid comic name title we get to deal with.)

The only thing we are honestly waiting for is Netflix or Skydance to post about it. In the industry, the film is confirmed. It’s in black and white. But they haven’t said anything. I figured we’d hear something via Twitter by today, but alas, as of 5PM, nothing. But that’s ok, because it will come.

(And TOG did got nominated for a GLADD award the other day, which Netflix and Gina, our director and new Co-Writer!)

But I am salty about one tiny little thing. Remember that sign idea? Well, I had already done day two’s when we got the word. So I changed it up.

And yes, I’ve shown that off on both Wednesday and Thursday’s streams. Because I’m ridiculous.

Ok, I’m off to make dinner and prep for tonight’s bonus stream to finish off Disneyland Adventures! Pop in if you want to, I promise I won’t bite.

Until next time!