Shane Black‘s The Nice Guys has become something of a cult classic. The Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe movie is beloved, praised for its balance of humor within its mystery story, and it is generally one of the best original crime films in the modern era. But the 2016 film was released against The Angry Birds movie and it didn’t end up getting the box office it would need to be celebrated as anything other than a good movie we all love. That hasn’t stopped fans from asking for a sequel though.

The Nice Guys is getting a Second Sight Films limited edition release and as part of the release, Black spoke about the situation and shared that it is feasible to make a sequel. “I know the rights situation on ‘The Nice Guys’ is a bit difficult. Joel [Silver]’s a producer, Warner Bros. is the distributor, there’s an oversees company that Ken Kao is a producer on. So to carve it out and make sure — in other words, can you make the sequel? Yes.”

But Black went on to ask another question: Will it be “financially feasible” in the long run? “That’s the problem, is you’re gonna present something that the actors have to agree to, that’s a good script, and that is going to be very expensive and the studio’s going to say, ‘Well, didn’t the last one sort of bomb at the theaters?’ And you say, ‘Yeah, but we want you to spend twice as much on this one anyway to get everyone back.“

What Would a Sequel to The Nice Guys Even Look Like?

Black wrote the original film with Anthony Bagarozzi and while there isn’t a confirmation about what a sequel would look like, Black did share that he took inspiration from the Shell Scott Mysteries. “The sequel was going to be any number of things, because ultimately, I come from the time where I used to read about a character named Shell Scott in a series of books by Richard Prather, and the character was so great. The capers changed, but you bought it for the character. So it doesn’t really matter what the caper would be in the next movie.”

Black went on to say that The Nice Guys would “find something.” He also shared that they did originally have an idea for a sequel film. “We had an idea that they go down to Mexico together and we’d set the whole thing south of the border. That was one notion, but we could just as easily have done something else,” Black said. “But once we got those two together and we decided to ‘all systems go,’ there was certainly a script to be had. I still look forward to one day writing that with Anthony.”

Until we know more, at least we have Black‘s original film to turn to. You can watch The Nice Guys now.

via Collider