Good News For The Escape Plan Series

There is some apparent good news for the Escape Plan series.

First, the second movie has now been slotted for a theatrical run in the United Kingdom.  Escape Plan 2: Hades will release there on July 20th in cinemas.  This may signify that it’ll get a theatrical release in other areas too.  For that week, the film does not have any significant competition, a Mamma Mia! sequel will not bother it.  However the week after, Mission: Impossible – Fallout is sure to bully it out of the way.

Elsewhere, the third movie, Escape Plan 3: Devil’s Station is now being shown to test audiences in California.  Is this another good sign?  Possibly.  The third movie will ditch the hi-tech theme of the second movie in favor of a more grounded approach, in the old prison used for The Shawshank Redemption.

In this installment, the daughter of a Hong Kong tech executive goes missing in what appears to be a routine ransom job. As Breslin (Stallone) and his crew delve deeper, they discover the culprit is the deranged son of one of their former foes, who also kidnapped the woman in Breslin’s life, and is holding her inside the massive prison known as Devil’s Station.

Dave Bautista returns once again for the third movie.  Probably, I’m guessing, the owner of a role intended originally for Arnold Schwarzenegger.