It has been two years since Gerard Butler and Mike Colter teamed up for Plane, one of the best action movies of 2023, and nearly as long since it was announced that a sequel was in the works. The movie, which followed a commercial pilot and a suspected murderer as they teamed up to protect passengers after their plane crashed in the middle of a civil war, was a genuinely fun, exciting, and action-packed cinematic experience, and one of Butler’s best movies.
Now that Plane is popular with those who have a Netflix subscription, including myself, I’m starting to think about the sequel announced many months ago and wondering what’s going on with it, and when, or if, we’ll ever see it. Here’s what I’ve found so far…
I Forgot All About Plane Until It Randomly Popped Up On Netflix
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Plane when it came out in January 2023. I saw it opening weekend, I preached the gospel of Jean-Francois Richet’s intense action thriller, and I had so many thoughts about it. However, there have been several more Geard Butler movies that have come out since then, and I forgot all about the movie until it randomly popped up on Netflix. Just like Geostorm, which gained a massive following on Netflix years after its release, Plane is topping the charts.
Going back and revisiting it was a ton of fun. There may not be any “Big Nick” type scenes like that party sequence from Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, and Butler isn’t smoking heaters left and right, but this genuinely fun throwback action thriller goes hard at times.
Most of all, all the new buzz surrounding Plane has me curious as to what’s going on with a sequel that has the most appropriate title ever: Ship. Well, let me take on you a guided tour of everything that’s been said about the movie since its announcement more than two years ago.
The Plane Sequel, Ship, Was Announced Right After The Original Tore Into Theaters In Early 2023
Back in February 2023, when Plane was still in the middle of its $75-million box office run, Variety reported that the aptly titled Ship was in the works. The announcement of a sequel exactly one month after the first movie opened in theaters was quite a move and a sign that producers MadRiver Pictures, Di Bonaventura Pictures, and G-BASE Productions were more than optimistic about the budding action movie franchise.
On top of that, the report also stated that there were plans to start shooting the sequel at some point before the end of the year. Those plans, however, would not end up happening, as filming didn’t start that year or any year since then, and I’m left wondering what’s going to happen with the sequel that people were really stoked on just two years ago.
The Action Thriller Would Focus On Mike Colter’s Character After The Events Of The First Film
One of the strangest yet most interesting aspects of Ship is the fact that Butler’s former RAF pilot and current commercial pilot, Brodie Torrance, isn’t going to be the main focus of the Plane sequel. Instead, as pointed out in the Variety article mentioned above, the movie will instead follow Mike Colter’s Louis Gaspare, a former GCP French Foreign Legionnaire accused of murder who was being transported to Toronto to face charges in the first movie.
Set after the events of the first film, which saw Gaspare fight off the remaining rebels so that Torrance could get the passengers and himself to safety before running into the jungle with a bag of cash and a newfound sense of freedom, the sequel will follow the legionnaire in the immediate aftermath of his escape. According to the report, Gaspare, who is at the center of an international manhunt, will become a stowaway on a cargo ship that is actually a transport vessel for a massive human trafficking operation. And so it begins again…
It Sounds Like The 2023 Writers And Actors Strikes Put Ship On Hold
It was smooth sailing for Ship as the Plane sequel prepared to leave the harbor and get things started, but then came a massive setback in the form of the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that brought Hollywood to a standstill for a large chunk of the year. In March 2025, two years after the movie was first announced, Colter told Collider that the strike made a mess of things:
The status on that is that it was a thing that happened during the strike. They were supposed to be following through on it [then the strike happened]. There’s things going on. Obviously, Gerard [Butler] and his company that produce that, they own the rights to it. So that’s a question for them moving it forward, because I got things going on. I’m sure he’s got things going on too, he’s shooting stuff. But I’d love to do the sequel, but it’s kind of in their ball park right now. It’s another thing to pray for.
It remains to be seen whether or not the pause brought on by the union strikes is just slowing things down or if it put an abrupt end to the sequel’s plans. Hopefully, it’s the former and not the latter.
Though Gerard Butler’s Not Supposed To Be Starring, Maybe These Delays Will Open It Up For Brodie Torrance’s Return
Though I’m bummed that we haven’t gotten a continuation of the Plane franchise after all this time, I’m hopeful that the delays will allow Butler to return for Ship in some capacity. Butler, who most recently appeared in the live-action adaptation of How to Train Your Dragon, has a stacked schedule with the long-in-the-works Greenland 2 and the highly anticipated Den of Thieves 3, but hopefully, he can make time to bring back one of his best characters in recent memory.
I mean, who doesn’t want to see Brodie Torrance fly plans, shoot guns, and kick all kinds of ass again?
Who knows, maybe we’ll see Ship take up a spot on the 2026 movie schedule after everything is said and done. I’m hoping for the best, as I need to see more of this series…