Sicario 2 - Soldado won’t feature Emily Blunt’s protagonist: ‘I’m going to have to talk to her about it’

Supporting actors Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin will both return for Sicario sequel Soldado, but not Emily Blunt, despite her having played protagonist Kate Macer in the original.

“That was my decision, and at some point I’m going to have to talk to her about it,” screenwriter Taylor Sheridan told TheWrap. “Her arc was complete… I couldn’t figure out a way to write a character that would do her talent justice.”

Blunt played an FBI agent dragged into the big league in Sicario, helping take out a drug cartel and learning more than she’d like about the bureau’s unorthodox tactics in the process.

“Look what she went through. It was a difficult role,” Taylor added. “Here I write this lead character and then I use her as a surrogate for the audience. I make her completely passive against her own will so the audience feels the same impotence that a lot of law enforcement officers feel, I drag her through hell, and betray her in the end. It was an arduous journey for the character, and for Emily. That character had arc.”

“What do you do next? She moves to some little town and becomes a sheriff and then gets kidnapped and then we have Taken? I had to tell the story that was true to this role, and I didn’t feel like I could create something with that character that would further that world that would do Emily’s character justice. That said, there could be room for Kate somewhere else down the road.”

Suburra creator Stefano Sollima takes over from Denis Villeneuve as director - you can read our interview with him here.