One of the earliest non-biological victims of the coronavirus pandemic was the Vin Diesel-led comic adaptation “Bloodshot”.
What had hoped to be a potential franchise launching a whole swath of comic adaptations from publisher Valiant Comics ended up seemingly burying the initiative before it started. Opening mid-March, just days before many cinemas closed down, the film understandably didn’t do well at the box-office.
Critics weren’t kind to it, though weren’t entirely dismissive. The film was quickly shifted to PVOD, and became one of the earliest films to adopt that strategy where it seemingly did well in the charts.
Now a new report indicates a sequel is in the works with the film’s star Vin Diesel coming back for more. DMG Entertainment founder and CEO Dan Mintz tells ComicBookResources.com that despite what happened with the first film, there’s definite momentum for a second:
“I think [Bloodshot] was very successful in that respect, a lot of people saw it and it did very well in the post-release rollout but you can’t use the same evaluation process, pre-COVID, to this. [Are] Vin Diesel and all those people going to still continue? Yes, because it did so well and the response to it has been so well, it’s just that the response has been in a non-transparent environment, as opposed to a transparent environment like box office numbers.”
It’s not clear if any of the involved talent like writers Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer or director David S.F. Wilson would return as well. “Bloodshot” had a tight budget of just $45 million which meant its $37 million box-office and strong VOD sales have likely have taken it into profit, but actual VOD sales numbers have not been revealed.
