Sicario 3 Advances After the Original Stars Pick the Team

Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin are set to return for Sicario 3 after reading Steven Knight’s latest draft, with Padraic McKinley directing. Black Label Media and Thunder Road plan to start shooting in early 2027 and are taking the package to studios, with several already interested.

The reunion is the first time all three leads have been lined up together since Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 original. It is also the first Sicario film Taylor Sheridan did not write, arriving two days after a report that he had already finished a script.

The Stars Chose the Writer and the Director

People close to the producers describe a package that moved only after the original three read Knight’s most recent draft and said yes. Finding a director came next, and the search was not a producers-only exercise. Black Label and Thunder Road met candidates. The lead cast held their own meetings. McKinley, coming off his first feature, The Weight, was the one who won the room.

Knight and McKinley are now working through notes from the stars. Plot details are being kept under wraps. That sequence is the actual greenlight: the actors did not join a finished studio picture. They approved the pages, helped pick the filmmaker, and stayed in the rewrite.

WHAT THE ORIGINAL THREE SIGNED OFF ON

• The pages: All three read Knight’s latest draft before they were on board to return.
• The director: The leads took their own meetings with candidates, then McKinley got the job.
• The rewrite: Knight and McKinley are still taking notes from the stars ahead of an early 2027 shoot.

Brolin had been the public pulse of the project for more than a year. In 2025 he called Sicario 3 “very, very real.” On August 21, 2026, while promoting Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, he said the film “is happening” and that production would begin “soon.” Producer Thad Luckinbill, who also acts in Sheridan’s Lioness, was more careful in the same stretch, pointing to Sheridan’s schedule as the obvious hurdle.

Sheridan’s Draft Was Not the One They Signed

Sheridan created the franchise and wrote both released films. Producers have said for years that he saw Sicario as a trilogy. Molly Smith, who runs Black Label Media with sister Rachel Smith and twin brothers Trent and Thad Luckinbill, put that on the record in 2023, when the 2023 Hollywood writers strike had the third film parked.

We’re very close. It’s one of the projects where we’re ready to put the train on the tracks as soon as the strike ends and our path is cleared. So we’re very excited to get that whole band back together. Taylor always envisioned it as a trilogy, so we have to close it out right. There’s no point in making it unless we can do justice to the true fans of Sicario.

Molly Smith, producer, to The Hollywood Reporter in 2023

A report dated October 2 said Sheridan had written scripts for Sicario 3 and Paramount’s Call of Duty movie, a detail tucked into coverage of his move toward NBCUniversal theatrical work. Trent Luckinbill had already described the bind in 2023: “He is so busy, and he stays close to it, and will obviously have input, too.” By October 5, the draft the stars had agreed to was Knight’s, and McKinley was the director attached to shoot it.

HOW THE THIRD FILM GOT A NEW WRITER

1. June 29, 2018: Sicario: Day of the Soldado opens, and work on a third film begins in some form soon after.
2. 2023: The writers strike delays the project. Smith says Sheridan saw a trilogy and the band should come back together.
3. April 2024: Brolin says Christopher McQuarrie “was involved for a while, but he’s not now,” and that he does not know if Sheridan is on board, even though he knows him well.
4. August 21, 2026: Brolin says Sicario 3 “is happening” and production will start “soon.”
5. October 2, 2026: A report says Sheridan has written the third film, alongside a Call of Duty script.
6. October 5, 2026: Black Label and Thunder Road take out a package with Knight’s draft, McKinley directing, and the original three on board.

McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen, the pair behind the last two Mission: Impossible films, had already penned a draft in the years when Sheridan’s television docket kept swallowing the calendar. Villeneuve told interviewers in 2024 he would not return to direct, though he would watch anything Sheridan wrote. Stefano Sollima, who directed Day of the Soldado, was never expected back. The version now going to market is the one the actors were willing to stand in front of.

Kate Macer Walks Back Into a Sequel That Cut Her

Blunt’s return as FBI Special Agent Kate Macer is the piece that changes the series’ shape. Del Toro is back as Alejandro Gillick, the former prosecutor turned hired gun, and Brolin as CIA officer Matt Graver. Those two carried 2018’s sequel without her. Sollima said at the time that her role in the first film was “sort of a moral guidance for the audience,” and that Soldado did not have that. Smith had kept pushing to bring Macer back, even indicating in late 2023 that the planned story would involve Kate. Blunt herself, in early 2024, called rumblings of a return “hearsay.”

Soldado does not leave Alejandro’s next chapter vague. The film jumps forward a year, with Gillick tracking down Miguel, the teenager who shot him, and asking if the boy wants to become a sicario. That sting plays like a handoff to a third film built around del Toro. Putting Macer in the same frame forces Knight to write a story that can hold the woman the sequel decided it did not need, alongside the two men it kept.

The first film was built around her shock at a border war run by men who already knew the ending. Bringing her back only works if she is more than a witness in a hallway. That is the job Knight now has, and it is the job the stars are still noting up in the draft.

The Third Film Is Going to Market Without Lionsgate

Lionsgate released Villeneuve’s film everywhere. Day of the Soldado went out under a split: Sony Pictures Releasing handled the United States after a multi-year deal with Black Label, and Lionsgate kept international. The new producers, Molly Smith, Trent Luckinbill and Thad Luckinbill for Black Label, Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee for Thunder Road, and returning producer Ed McDonnell, are not repeating that map. They plan to take the project to market.

The money on the first two films is the sales pitch, and it is not a simple upgrade. The original, made on one of the franchise’s $30 million and $35 million budgets, opened at $401,288 on a platform release and then grossed $84,997,446 worldwide, $46,889,293 of that domestic. Soldado went out wide on June 29, 2018, in 3,055 theaters, opened to $19,007,566, and took in $75,837,743 worldwide. It actually earned more in the United States, $50,072,235, or 66 percent of its total, with $25,765,508 overseas.

THE TWO FILMS A STUDIO WOULD BE BUYING INTO

A buyer is not purchasing Sheridan’s next script, and it is not purchasing Villeneuve. It is purchasing three stars who already chose the pages and the director, plus a crime series whose first film still out-earned its wider, louder sequel. Several studios have shown interest. None is attached.

A Sundance Debut Director Inherits the Trilogy

McKinley’s The Weight, with Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2026, played Berlin, and reached U.S. theaters through Vertical on September 18. It is his first feature as director, after television work that includes Fightworld and Kingdom. The producers and the cast picked him anyway, which is a louder statement about the meetings than any debut reel.

Knight arrives with a longer filmography and a second job that loops back to this franchise. He created Peaky Blinders, wrote Locke and Eastern Promises, and earned an Oscar nomination for Dirty Pretty Things. He is also writing the next James Bond film for Villeneuve, the director whose Sicario the new movie cannot clone. That is the tension inside the hire: the original Sicario filmmaker is off making Bond with this writer, while this writer tries to close Sheridan’s trilogy with a director one film into his career.

The first objection the package has to beat is already familiar. Day of the Soldado showed what this series looks like without Villeneuve, and that memory sits in front of McKinley whether anyone says his name or not. Knight’s résumé does not erase it. The original three in one frame is the counter, especially Blunt, whose absence is the thing Soldado never paid off.

Production Is Aimed at Early 2027

Blunt comes off The Devil Wears Prada 2 and has wrapped A Quiet Place Part 3. Brolin next appears in 20th Century’s Whalefall, which opens October 16, and has Dune: Part Three later in 2026. Del Toro is coming off an Oscar nomination for One Battle After Another, a race he lost to co-star Sean Penn. Those calendars are what “top of year” has to thread.

The project has circulated for years under the informal name Sicario: Capos. The October 5 package did not confirm a title, a storyline, or a distributor. Sheridan’s input, which Luckinbill once said would “obviously” remain, is also unstated in the new setup.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The cast: Blunt as Kate Macer, Brolin as Matt Graver, and del Toro as Alejandro Gillick are set to return.
• The crew: McKinley directs; Knight wrote the draft the stars read; both are still taking notes from them.
• The plan: Black Label and Thunder Road want cameras in early 2027 and are shopping the film to studios.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The studio: Lionsgate is not locked, Sony is not locked, and no buyer has been named.
• The title and plot: Capos remains a circulating nickname; the story is under wraps.
• Sheridan’s seat: He is not the writer of the advancing script, and no new public role has been described.

Smith’s 2023 test still hangs over the sale. There is no point in making it, she said, unless it does justice to the people who actually wanted a third Sicario. The original three have now picked the writer and the director they will stand behind. A studio still has to buy that bet before anyone gets back to the border.