Face/Off “Direct Sequel” In the Works from Adam Wingard…But What Does It Mean?

The prophecy has been fulfilled.

Adam Wingard, the filmmaker behind the upcoming Godzilla vs. Kong will be helming and co-writing a “direct sequel” to Face/Off with his You’re Next screenwriter Simon Barrett. The news comes as a grand surprise to fans of the original 1997 John Woo action film, which starred Idina Menzel superfan John Travolta and America’s favorite chaos monster, Nicolas Cage. In it, Cage plays a terrorist who feuds with Travolta’s FBI agent and the two figures, as the film’s title suggests, swap faces as part of the plot. As Andy Samberg says in Get in the Cage, a recurring Weekend Update segment in which he used to impersonate Cage, “I can’t believe they take [Nicolas Cage’s] face off in Face/Off!”

It is unlikely that Cage, Travolta and/or Nick Cassavetes (the director of The Notebook, who made an unlikely appearance in the film) will reprise their respective roles in the forthcoming sequel, especially considering the permanence of being impaled. But this announcement presents some exciting possibilities for those that love the bonkers film. Face/Off was the 11th highest grossing film of 1997. The people demand more Face/Off-related storytelling. Perhaps this updated sequel could be a Mad Libs of subgenres. Perhaps a dance flick about the dangers of hubris in the spirit of All That Jazz or Step Up? Face/Off Two the Streets. Or maybe a psychological thriller with an anarchistic sub-plot: Face/Off 2: ACAB.

Wingard and Barrett’s script and the resulting film only has us guessing for now—with no casting intel or timeline announced—but if we’re lucky we’ll get some great memes out of this thing.