The original Boondock Saints movie came out in 1999. The film starred Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus, and it was written and directed by Troy Duffy. The Boondock Saints initially had a limited and unsuccessful run in a handful of theaters, but it went on to become a cult classic on video. In 2009, a sequel called The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day was released.
In an appearance at the Wizard World New York Experience, Norman Reedus was asked about the long-rumored third Boondock Saints movie. Norman Reedus said, “Supposedly Troy [Duffy] is writing it right now, so I’m curious to read it.”
Explaining the ten year gap between the first Boondock Saints movie and the second Boondock Saints movie, Norman Reedus said, “You know, there was a lawsuit with that movie, so there was a ten year contract. We couldn’t even do part 2 until the ten years expired. Everybody wanted to do it sooner, but I think the story is all the lawyers were sitting in a room, right when the clock struck 12, everyone had their pen in their hand, you know, waiting for the ten years to be over. That’s why it took ten years.”
At the Wizard World New York Experience, The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus dropped an interesting tidbit of information about a project he almost worked on with the late Heath Ledger. While Reedus is best known for his acting roles, he also has an interest in directing.
Reedus has directed a couple of short films and one of the projects he eventually wants to direct is a movie based on [the book] ‘I Was A White Slave In Harlem.’ When asked about the movie during a Q&A panel, Reedus said,“We haven’t even done it yet. It’s a script that I’ve been working on for about five years. It’s sort of a marvel how it happened. I worked on it with somebody that did her biography, and so the script, we kept just rewriting and rewriting.”
One of the big challenges with the film was “to get like a young actor to play an insanely masculine tranny.” When asked why he didn’t play the part, Reedus said, “You know I would have, but I couldn’t direct it, and I’ve never directed a feature before, and I didn’t want that much pressure.”
Norman Reedus added,“The only actor that ever said he would play the part was Heath Ledger.” Heath Ledger passed away in 2008 after completing work on The Dark Knight.
One of the central storylines of Season Three of The Walking Dead was the reunion between brothers Merle and Daryl Dixon. There were several emotional and powerful scenes that took place between actors Michael Rooker (Merle) and Norman Reedus (Daryl). One of the most memorable scenes was when Merle ripped Daryl’s shirt and spotted scarring on Daryl’s back.
At the Wizard World New York Experience Comic-Con, Michael Rooker gave some background info on what was going on in Merle’s head during that scene. Michael Rooker explained, “At the time when I saw the scarring on Daryl’s back in the woods…the scarring is the same scarring on my back, because I was abused before my little brother was abused.”
Rooker continued, “So in Merle’s mind, when Merle splits, he’s thinking…you know in my mind, I felt Merle left because the abuse got so bad that he was either going to kill the guy or he just had to walk. So it wasn’t even in his mind that he was going to switch from the one brother to the younger brother. So when I find out that he abused my younger brother as well, you know if he had been there in front of me, I probably would have snapped his neck.”