This 2011 sci-fi action film starring Hugh Jackman deserves a sequel

We mainly know Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in the X Menmovies and movies like The Greatest Showman and Prisoners. In 2011 he played the leading role in the unique sci-fi film Real Steel. The film was quite successful and featured a top cast, but there was no sequel.

RealSteel by director Shawn Levy, it was released in theaters in 2011 and was a fairly big success. Critics certainly didn’t think it was perfect, but it was a good Hollywood film. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus is therefore: “Despite the silly premise, this is a well-made Hollywood film: tense and exciting action with just enough characterization.”

Story
RealSteel is based on the short story Steel by Richard Matheson from 1956. The film was about a former boxer and father (Hugh Jackman) whose sport is now played by robots.

Together with his estranged son (Dakota Goyo), he finds an old robot in a junkyard. Together they fix the robot and train it to become a boxing champion.

Plan?
The film had a turnover of around 300 million dollars and was therefore a reasonable success. It had a production budget of $110 million. So you would say that there was enough reason to make a sequel, but that never happened. In 2021, director Shawn Levy expressed that he had been talking to Jackman for years about a potential sequel with Ryan Reynolds, but nothing concrete ever materialized.

However, something unexpected happened in 2022, namely a sequel RealSteel announced as a series on Disney+. Earlier this year, Levy provided an update on this series: “Still, as I said, I want it as much as the Real Steel fans do, so alive, but on pause.”

Reunion
Levy has had it in the years since RealSteel been very busy. His most recent films, The Adam Project and Free Guy, both starred Ryan Reynolds. When it was announced that Jackman would play the role of Wolverine one more time in Deadpool 3 With Reynolds, the film did not yet have a director, but soon after it was announced that Levy would be directing.

Who knows, maybe the reunion between Levy and Jackman will create some more momentum around the sequel RealSteelbut for now, first Deadpool 3 still to be completed.