Dimension Films announced today that financing has been arranged for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, the sequel to the 2005 hit film that was co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller.  Miller and Rodriguez are re-teaming for the sequel.  Miller will share the screenplay credit with William Monahan (The Departed).  Casting will begin next week with shooting now set to begin this summer at Rodriguez’ Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas.

 

Rodriguez told The Hollywood Reporter, “I have wanted to re-team with Frank Miller and return to the world he created since the day we wrapped the original, but have felt a duty to the fans to wait until we had something truly exceptional that would meet and exceed what have become epic expectations.  A Dame to Kill For will certainly be worth the wait.”

 

The first Sin City film, which cost $40 million to produce, made $160 million worldwide in 2005.  The movie also stimulated huge sales of Miller’s Sin City graphic novels (published by Dark Horse), sales that dwarfed those driven by Spider-Man 2, which made more than four times as much as Sin City at the box office in 2004.  Dark Horse managed to sell over 500,000 copies of Miller’s Sin City graphic novel in bookstores in 2005, and even the release of the Sin City DVD late in the year led to a noticeable jump in sales of the Sin City graphic novels (see “The DVD Effect Materializes”).

 

Check out “Sin City” in ICv2 index and see how many times over the past 7 years that the sequel has been promised.  Will the film finally get made this time? Well it certainly appears that it will, but nothing is totally certain in Hollywood.  Securing the financing is nearly always the biggest hurdle in modern filmmaking, but Rodriguez has a busy schedule that he must have rearranged to accommodate Sin City (see “Rodriquez to Make Animated Heavy Metal Feature”). 

 

If all is proceeding well there should be a bunch of casting announcements over the next few weeks.  The first Sin City film featured an all-star cast that included Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Benicio Del Toro, Rosario Dawson, Clive Owen, and Jamie King. According to THR, Dimension is expecting many cast members to return for the sequel.