The Rock Is Working on a 'San Andreas' Sequel
‘San Andreas’ (Jasin Boland/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
By Borys Kit
Brace yourselves: New Line and Dwayne Johnson want to make the earth move for you one more time.
The company has hired Neil Widener and Gavin James to write a sequel to San Andreas, the Johnson-starring earthquake disaster movie that grossed over $473 million worldwide last year.
A good chunk of the team is due to return for the second installment. Johnson is swinging back to the sequel as is producer Beau Flynn, producing via his Flynn Picture Co. banner. Brad Peyton, who directed the movie, is also returning.
The 2015 movie saw Johnson as a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot who teams up with his estranged wife (Carla Gugino) to save their daughter (Alexandra Daddario) when a series of quakes crush Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Gugino, Daddario and Paul Giamatti, who played a seismologist, are also expected to return. (Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore as well as Carlton Cuse wrote the original’s script.)
Plot details for the new installment are being sheltered, but the sequel is expanding the disaster locales by going global, focusing on the infamous Ring of Fire. The ring circles the Pacific Ocean with fault lines and volcanoes and, according to scientists, is home to about 90 percent of the worlds’ earthquakes.
Johnson’s production banner, Seven Bucks Productions, will produce in some capacity. Peyton will also act as a producer on the sequel.
Richard Brener, Michael Disco, and Samuel J. Brown are overseeing for New Line. Wendy Jacobson will oversee for FPC.
Widener and James are rising writers who a year ago sold Verona, a reimagining of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with Joe Roth attached to produce, to Sony. More recently they set up the true-story drama Battle for Alcatraz at Paramount with Bridge of Spies’ Matt Charman producing.
The duo is repped by CAA, Grandview and attorney Greg Slewett.
Related: Should Viacom Sell Paramount? Analyst Pressure Builds
Watch a ‘San Andreas’ trailer:
