Road to Perdition Sequels

By Jim Vejvoda,IGN
November 3,2008

Two sequels are in the works to the acclaimed 2002 graphic novel adaptation Road to Perdition, which starred Tom Hanks, Daniel Craig, Jude Law, and the late Paul Newman and was directed by Sam Mendes.

An announcement picked up The Hollywood News and MTV reveals that Perdition author Max Allan Collins will direct the two films -- Road to Purgatory and Road to Paradise -- from his own screenplay adaptations. JBM Production Company and EMO Films will produce. Road to Purgatory will be dedicated to Paul Newman.

In a July 2007 posting at FOMAC, Collins wrote, "The screenplay is my own adaptation of Road to Purgatory, which we are in the early stages of attempting to mount right here in the midwest with me directing. I'm partnered with some very good people, including longtime crony Phil D., and it's an exciting venture - if we can pull off the fund-raising, it will be the most ambitious project I've ever attempted in any medium. The script was submitted to the Iowa Motion Picture Awards and won the Award of Excellence for Unproduced Screenplay."


Publisher Harper Collins provided the following synopsis for 2004's Road to Purgatory: "It's 1942, and—from the Atlantic to the Pacific—the world is torn apart. Ten years earlier Michael O'Sullivan accompanied his gangster father on the road, fleeing from the mobsters who killed his mother and young brother. After an idyllic upbringing by loving adoptive parents in a small Midwestern town, Michael is now deep in the jungles of Bataan, carrying a tommy gun like his father's, fighting the Japanese. When brutal combat unearths deep-buried feelings of violence and revenge, Michael returns to the homefront a battle-scarred veteran of twenty-two, ready to pick up his old war against the Chicago Mob."

"Suddenly, Michael 'Satariano' must become one of the enemy, working his way quickly up to the trusted side of Frank Nitti, Al Capone's heir, putting himself—and his soul—in harm's way. Leaving behind his heartbroken childhood sweetheart, the war hero enters a limbo of crime and corruption—his only allies: Eliot Ness, seeking one last hurrah as a gangbuster, and a lovely nightclub singer playing her own dangerous game. Even as Michael embraces his father's memory to battle the Mob from within—leaving bodies and broken lives in his wake—he finds himself sucked into the very way of life he abhors."

Harper Collins also has a synopsis for 2005's Road to Paradise: "Lake Tahoe, 1973: Michael Satariano—who as a young man fought the Capone mob in Chicago—has reached a comfortable middle age, with a loving wife at home, a talented teenage daughter in high school, and a son earning medals in Vietnam. Now running a casino for the mob, Michael thinks he's put his killing days behind him—after all, he's made a respectable life for himself and his family ... and plenty of money for the boys back in Chicago. So when godfather Sam Giancana orders him to hit a notoriously violent and vulnerable gangster, Michael refuses. But when the hit goes down anyway, Michael is framed for murder; to save his family, he must turn state's witness under the fledgling Witness Protection Program."

"Relocated to the supposed safety of Paradise, a tract-housing development in Arizona, Michael soon finds himself facing a wrath so cruel that even the boy raised by a hitman father is unprepared. And with his teenage daughter in tow, Michael must return to the road and a violent way of life he thought he had long left behind."