My thanks to Jamie Hall of That Fantasy Blog for bringing this to my attention! It seems that Taken 2 has got its funding and is coming to theaters in the near future. If you’re like me, or my wife, then chances are you loved the movie Taken with a passion! I mean how badass was Liam Neeson in that movie?

Sure, his daughter could be annoying, his wife was like a caricature of a rotten social climber, and the plot wasn’t all that complex. BUT WHO CARED! It worked, and Liam Neeson’s skills, take downs and deliver were superlative! You remember his opening salvo to Marko and the guys who kidnapped his daughter:

“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”

Tell me you can do better than that! And remember that scene where he walks right into their hideout posing as a French agent and begins extorting them? What balls! And to find out that he was just playing them so he could find out which of them was Marko… I’m pretty sure Neeson became my hero the moment he uttered his pre-ass kicking line:

“You don’t remember me? We spoke on the phone two days ago. I told you I would find you.” WHAM WHAM WHAM! All dead…

In any case, it seems that Luc Besson, the writer/director who helped create the first, is back to produce a sequel. No news on when it will be released yet, but details released from the studio indicate that they are planning on it being this year. As for the storyline, it appears that it will once again involve Bryan Mills’ (Neeson’s) family being taken hostage. This time around, it happens in Istanbul during a family trip, apparently by Albanian mafia members who are looking to get even for their last encounter with him. One would think they learned their lesson!