In Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, there is a scene where Big Nick O’Brien (Gerard Butler) asks Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) why he continues to risk it all to pull off these seemingly impossible heists. “It’ll never be enough,” Donnie tells Nick. “Because it’s not about the money. It’s about the challenge.”
Seven years have passed between 2018’s Den of Thieves and its 2025 sequel. Between injuries to the actors, COVID-19, and the war in Ukraine, Den of Thieves 2 almost never happened. Yet writer and director Christian Gudegast was determined to shoot a sequel. Like Donnie, Gudegast embraces the challenge, knowing he has more stories to tell within the Den of Thieves universe.
“No. Not enough,” Gudegast tells Digital Trends when asked if he would have been OK without a Den of Thieves sequel. “When I was researching Den 1, I came across so much material that we always knew it was a much more expansive world. There were always going to be three or four stories in there. The arcs of the characters go through all three or four of them. It was from the very outset that we planned on a much longer story divvied up into different films.”
Den of Thieves 2 ditches the streets of Los Angeles for a European excursion. Big Nick is still in disbelief that Donnie successfully robbed the Los Angeles Federal Reserve and escaped his grasp. Nick’s humiliation has led to a divorce and a benching from the force. Driven by revenge, Nick travels to France and aligns himself with Pantera, a police task force looking to take down an elite gang of thieves in the Panther Mafia. Donnie has teamed with the Panthers for his next heist.
It doesn’t take long for Big Nick to find Donnie. However, Nick does not arrest Donnie. Instead, he forces Donnie to let him join the next heist, with the target being the World Diamond Center. “And the cop goes gangster,” Donnie says to Nick, who transforms from a lawman into a criminal.
Gudegast knew he wanted to explore the criminal underworld of Europe and began researching the heists that inspired the movie’s climactic sequence. Reading about these heists was not enough for Gudegast. He needed to immerse himself in this world, which meant traveling to Europe and speaking with the people, including real-life master thieves.
“Whenever I do research, I really do a deep dive into the world. I don’t like to read an article or something. I actually go to the world, meet the people, hang out with them,” Gudegast says. “If you really want to get down into the details of something, you have to go to the world and get to know them to break down that wall, and that’s when you get into the interesting stuff.”
For Gudegast, the devil is in the details. Gudegast scripts every scene, including the attempted heist, with extreme precision and an emphasis on specificity. “You have an ability to move things quickly when you’re cutting it,” says Gudegast, who meticulously maps out every scene ahead of time.
At its core, Den of Thieves is an action franchise. However, Pantera is funnier than expected thanks to the odd-couple-esque relationship between Nick and Donnie. The club scene, when Nick and Donnie party a little too hard before being thrown out, is a prime example of the budding chemistry between Butler and Jackson.
“We knew that from the beginning, it was going to be more of a buddy movie. We wanted to explore that side of them,” Gudegast says. “I think a lot of Den 1 was funnier than we anticipated, so we wanted to lean into that more in this one for sure.”
The ending leaves the door open for a third film. Whether Lionsgate greenlights Den of Thieves 3 will come down to the box office returns and audience reception. Initial tracking projects Den of Thieves 2 to earn $11 million to $13 million domestically for its opening weekend, down from the $15.2 opening for Den of Thieves in 2018. Until then, Gudegast is prepared to make Den of Thieves 3.
“Research is done, and yeah, we’re ready to go,” he said.
Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is now in theaters.
