When I spoke with Kickboxer: Vengeance and Kickboxer: Retaliation filmmaker Dimitri Logothetis a few months ago about his upcoming film Gunner, he teased that work on the third film in the trilogy would be coming. And now Deadline has news on when shooting will actually begin on Kickboxer: Armageddon, along with another new project from Logothetis, Flying Shadow!
The plan is for production to begin on both movies next January in Mississippi and Malta, assuming the films can get an Interim Agreement from SAG-AFTRA to proceed. Of course, the strikes are still taking place. The scripts for both movies were penned prior to the strike beginning.
Kickboxer: Armageddon would officially be the eighth movie in the franchise, but the third since Kickboxer: Vengeance rebooted it in 2016 with Alain Moussi in the lead as Kurt Sloane. Jean-Claude Van Damme, who starred in the original 1989 movie, returned for it and the 2018 sequel, Kickboxer: Retaliation.
Logothetis wrote the first film before taking the directing reins for the second, and will direct the third, as well. The story finds Sloane’s world destroyed once again when a bomb meant for him kills his family. With nothing left to lose, Sloane battles through the underground martial arts scene looking for the man responsible, Cesare, the twin brother of Van Damme’s Master Durand. Logothetis co-wrote the script with Jim McGrath.
As for Flying Shadow, it “follows ex-military Black Ops secret service agent Travis Rawls and commander of Chinese private security force Ling as they work to avoid certain tragedy when the ancient legendary sword, Flying Shadow, is stolen, leaving the President’s life hanging in the balance.” Logothetis and McGrath wrote this one, as well.
I’m a huge fan of Logothetis, who also directed the sci-fi/martial arts film Jiu Jitsu that starred Nicolas Cage, Frank Grillo, and Tony Jaa. He has an old school style that I’ve compared to the Cannon Films days. The Kickboxer movies have been awesome since he boarded them and I can’t wait to see how the trilogy wraps up.
