Ryuhei Kitamura confirms “Versus” sequel, vows to pull Tak Sakaguchi out of retirement

By kevin on April 28, 2013 at 10:02am EDT

Yesterday, while on stage for the Tokyo premiere of his second Hollywood film, No One Lives, drector Ryuhei Kitamura (Azumi, Godzilla: Final Wars) made the unexpected announcement that he’ll be making a sequel to his internationally-beloved 2000 action/horror film Versus in the near future.

According to Cinema Today, Kitamura was talking about how he’ll soon return to working in Asia and mentioned that he’ll be doing a Versus sequel sometime next year, confidently adding, “The lead actor [Tak Sakaguchi] is retired, but I’ll get him to make a comeback. He’ll do it if I do it.”

So it looks like this may finally be happening after countless false alarms over the years. And judging by how enthusiastic Sakaguchi has been about doing a Versus sequel with Kitamura in the past, it seems like his retirement is going to be incredibly short-lived if it was even legit in the first place. Just when he thought he was out, yadda yadda.

Do people still care? 13 years is a long time and fan expectations have evolved quite a bit since the original Versus was released. The bad news is Versus 2 would have to be an order of magnitude bigger and better than Versus to get a positive reaction. The good news is that’s entirely possible to accomplish if it’s done with the same amount of passion that went into the original.