David Oyelowo has offered a promising update on the status of Disney‘s sequel to 1991’s The Rocketeer.
“We have forward momentum,” Oyelowo said to TheWrap while promoting his Paramount+ series Lawmen: Bass Reeves. “I know you guys hear this stuff all the time, but we are 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 Rocketeer was created by comic book writer and artist Dave Stevens in 1982 for Pacific Comics. Disney acquired the movie rights to nn the late ’80s as a potential franchise starter akin to Batman. Directed by Captain America: The First Avenger‘s Joe Johnston, The Rocketeer followed a ’30s stunt pilot named Cliff Secord (Bill Campbell) who comes across a stolen prototype rocket pack created by Howard Hughes. Attracting the FBI and a group of Nazis led by movie star Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton), Cliff has to protect the rocket as well as save his aspiring actress girlfriend Jenny Blake (Jennifer Connelly).
The Return of the Rocketeer
Announced in 2020, Oyelowo’s legacy sequel — developed under the working title The Return of the Rocketeer — would see Secord’s iconic rocket pack passed on to an ex-Tuskegee Airman. Devotion’s J.D. Dillard was initially attached to direct the project before he dropped out in 2022. Oyelowo’s interest in continuing the Rocketeer franchise was driven by his love for the original movie was attracted to the human aspect of the character.
“I had the idea of what happens if the jetpack is passed on to an ex-Tuskegee Airman,” Oyelowo said. “Someone who you’re not having to do a bunch of heavy lifting as to why does he have the skill and the bravery to be able to don the pack and go off and be heroic?”
He added, “That is something that I think the original film had to do a little bit more heavy lifting around is… Secord, he’s this circus pilot, and then how does he get to do that? And all that kind of stuff. But a guy coming out of World War II who is an ace at what he does, those skills are transferable. And that became the jump off for what felt like, and thankfully Disney agreed, a very exciting way into doing this story in a slightly different way.”
The Return of the Rocketeer does not have a release date.
