Ready your rocket pack and dig out your best leather suit – David Oyelowo seems pretty positive about the direction his Rocketeer sequel is going.
David Oyelowo’s follow-up to Disney’s live-action original, The Rocketeer, was first announced in 2021 – and we’ve not heard much about it since. In a recent interview, though, Oyelowo offered a bit of an update on the current state of the project (happily, it all sounds pretty promising).
“We have forward momentum,” Oyelowo told TheWrap.
“I know you guys hear this stuff all the time, but we[‘re] in the script development stage and if you’re going to reinvigorate that beloved franchise, you better come with the goods. And so Eugene Ashe is currently writing away and we were talking about it only this week. We’re all very committed to that. But it’s going to have to be great and we will not rest until it is.”
The original film, set in 1938 California and starring Billy Campbell as a stunt pilot stumbling across a Howard Hughes prototype rocket pack, was a bit of a box office disappointment for the House of Mouse when it was released in 1991 – but has retained a solid fanbase in the years since. Solid enough that Disney want a sequel, anyway.
“I loved the original film,” Oyelowo told TheWrap. “I remember seeing it, and again, not unlike the cowboy genre, there was something about it, the aspirational, inspirational, heroic quality of it. I also liked that it was sort of a bit more DIY and do it yourself in terms of the pack. It wasn’t superpowers. It was a guy. It just felt more grounded somehow.”
Oyelowo’s pitch for the follow-up involves handing the Rocketeer suit over to a former Tuskegee airman (a group of Black air force pilots who served with distinction in WWII – their story was the basis for the 2012 film, Red Tails). The actor-director described the switch to an already adept army veteran as “a very exciting way into doing this story in a slightly different way.”
Oyelowo is developing the project alongside his wife, Jessica Oyelowo, and might be set to star in the film as well. We’ll bring you more on the Rocketeer sequel when we have it!
