Overlooked in last Sunday’s Variety story by Nick Holdsworth about Robert De Niro‘s comments in front of a Karlovy Vary Film Festival audience is a comment he made about wanting to make two more Good Shepherd films. For the tube maybe. Certainly for theatrical. The want-to-see would be close to nil. De Niro is just “talking,” of course, but it gives you an idea of how off-on-their-own-cloud some hyphenates and former movie stars can be.
De Niro said he “would like to make one [sequel] bringing the action forward from 1961 to 1989, the other following its hero, Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), up to the present day,” Holdsworth wrote.
Part One, in other words, would end with the collapse of Communism in the Soviet satellite countries in eastern Europe. It would of course diverge from history in that James Jesus Angleton, the legendary CIA figure whom the Wilson character is largely based upon, died in 1987.
Part Two would presumably concern itself with Saddam Hussein, the ’91 Gulf war, Islamic fundamentalism, the ’93 World Trade Center bombing, 9/11, bogus WMDs, the March ’03 invasion of Iraq and so on.
De Niro said that “although he is not working on research for the concluding parts of the hoped-for trilogy, he said [that] being in central Europe offered a good opportunity to begin thinking about the material. √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚ÄúI had not been planning to do research on that while here, but it is a good idea,√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù De Niro said.