One Director Has Three of the Most Exciting Upcoming Action Movies to His Name

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Action movies are produced in all four corners of the globe, and one filmmaker from Indonesia has no fewer than three especially exciting ones on his itinerary. Indonesia has become a strong foundation for action stars and directors alike to break out and flourish, a trend which arguably began with the 2012 release of The Raid: Redemption and its 2014 sequel The Raid 2. Since then, major martial arts stars like Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Cecep Arif Rahman, and Joe Taslim have gone on to great success and popularity in both the East and the West, and the same has also been the case for many of the directors overseeing their work. One of the best such examples is director Timo Tjahjanto.

The name might not be immediately familiar to those not already enamored with Indonesian martial arts films, but Tjahjanto has risen to legendary status among devoted action fans for his work in the Indonesian action world (often working with the aforementioned Indonesian action movie greats.) However, Tjahjanto could be on the verge of breaking into the mainstream with his upcoming slate of three major action films — two being products of the Hollywood system, and one from Indonesia. Moreover, Timo Tjahjanto’s three upcoming action movies are not only some of the most exciting on the way, but could have some other off-shoot effects as well.

Timo Tjahjanto Is Directing Nobody 2, The Beekeeper 2, & The Shadow Strays 2

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The forthcoming Timo Tjahjanto trifecta is set to commence this summer, with Tjahjanto making his Hollywood directorial debut with the upcoming Nobody 2. As the follow-up to 2021’s sleeper hit Nobody, the sequel sees Bob Odenkirk return as Hutch Mansell, a former assassin who has come out of retirement and set to embark on his next mission with his father David (Christopher Lloyd) and brother Harry (RZA). Nobody garnered Odenkirk acclaim for his performance as Hutch and debut as an action hero, with the movie also drawing comparisons to Atomic Blonde and the John Wick franchise. This is just the beginning for Tjahjanto’s foray into the Hollywood action movie scene.

Tjahjanto is also set to direct another sequel to a surprise action hit, namely The Beekeeper 2, in which Jason Statham’s Adam Clay will return as the mysterious “beekeeper” trained to protect American society. 2024’s The Beekeeper is one of Jason Statham’s wildest action movies, and quickly became one of his most popular actioners in years, with director David Ayer also earning praise for the movie’s John Wick-style unveiling of a hidden world of assassins. It isn’t clear why Ayer is not returning for The Beekeeper 2, especially given Ayer’s growing partnership with Statham seen in their 2025 team-up A Working Man, but it could simply boil down to Ayer having other projects in the works that create a scheduling conflict with the production timeline of The Beekeeper 2 (though Ayer could still potentially be involved as a writer or producer on the sequel). In any case, Tjahjanto is a worthy successor to Ayer in diving into the Beekeeper universe as its newest director.

With two sequels to hit action movies on the docket, Tjahjanto is nonetheless still keeping busy with a follow-up to his own 2024 Netflix action hit, The Shadow Strays, which establishes its own hidden society of deadly underworld assassins known as the Shadows. When a young Shadow known only as 13 (Aurora Ribero) develops a friendship with a local boy named Monji (Ali Fikri), 13 soon finds herself on a mission to rescue the kidnapped boy while also coming into conflict with her own team of Shadows, including her mentor Umbra (Hana Malasan). The Shadow Strays became a massive hit among action and martial arts fans in late 2024, with the movie’s mythos about the Shadows, cliffhanger ending, and surprise cameo by The Raid star Yayan Ruhian also laying the groundwork for its follow-up. Tjahjanto recently took to Twitter/X to confirm his commitment to delivering on the teases at the end of The Shadow Strays, simply posting “Shadows will return,” an exciting confirmation for lovers of Indonesian martial arts action.

Timo Tjahjanto Is One On Indonesia’s Most Celebrated Action (& Horror) Filmmakers

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Timo Tjahjanto has progressively grown into a cult favorite action and horror movie director with an increasingly mainstream spotlight being shone on his work. In the early days of his career, Tjahjanto frequently partnered with fellow Indonesian filmmaker Kimo Stamboel, (the two credited as The Mo Brothers in the collaborative efforts), with the duo first helming the horror short Dara before landing their first major break with their 2009 feature-length extrapolation of Dara, Macabre. Tjahjanto further showcased his talent for gory, unhinged horror in directing or co-directing segments in the horror anthology films The ABCs of Death, V/H/S/2 and V/H/S/94. Tjahjanto would also bring his horror movie pedigree to his leap into Indonesia’s exploding martial arts action movie industry.

Tjahjanto first re-teamed with Stamboel for 2017’s Headshot, in which The Raid‘s Iko Uwais portrays an amnesiac former assassin fighting for his freedom. Tjahjanto’s name subsequently exploded in adulation among action fans in his solo directorial outing, 2018’s The Night Comes For Us, featuring Joe Taslim, Iko Uwais, and Julie Estelle in an all-out war of underworld assassins. With 2024’s The Shadow Strays, Tjahjanto’s popularity among action fans is at an all time high, both for his talent at worldbuilding (showcasing viscerally powerful, dynamic, and balletic martial arts action) and his skill at laying some horror movie coating into his action work to make it stand out from anything else on the martial arts movie landscape. With all of that associated with Timo Tjahjanto’s filmography, there’s little mystery as to why he’s being attached to Hollywood action films at such a rapid pace. Even better, the possibilities of Tjahjanto’s upcoming slate are also very exciting for action fans to contemplate.

Why Timo Tjahjanto Helming These 3 Action Movies Is So Exciting

Purely on the level of delivering martial arts action and stunts of highest caliber, Timo Tjahjanto is right at the top of the upper one-percentile of 21st century action filmmakers (it’s a wonder why his name has never come up in the constantly fruitless efforts to finally get the eternally in-development Hollywood remake of The Raid in motion.) In that respect, fans of the original Nobody and The Beekeeper can look forward to two exceptionally action-packed blasts in Nobody 2 and The Beekeeper 2. Ditto for The Shadow Strays 2, but Tjahjanto’s promise of the Shadows returning also implies a deeper expansion and exploration of the world they inhabit, along with the legend of the Shadows as the most feared assassins in the world. If you enjoy great martial arts action with slasher movie levels of gore, Timo Tjahjanto’s upcoming triumvirate of Nobody 2, The Beekeeper 2, and The Shadow Strays 2 are undoubtedly three of the most exciting upcoming action films of the next few years.

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Moreover, Tjahjanto’s jump to Hollywood, along with his plans for the Shadow Strays franchise, bring with them another exciting possibility, that being the potential for the long-awaited The Night Comes for Us spinoff focused on Julie Estelle’s Operator to finally be realized. The Night Comes For Us itself experienced an extraordinarily protracted development process (with Tjahjanto at one point considering adapting the script into a comic book.) Despite the strong reception to The Night Comes For Us, progress has been slow on Tjahjanto’s intended follow-up in which the mysterious Operator, arguably the breakout character of the movie, would take center stage. However, Tjahjanto’s growing mainstream recognition and foothold in the Hollywood system could change that.

With Tjahjanto’s batting average as an action filmmaker, the potential of Nobody 2, The Beekeeper 2, and The Shadow Strays 2 to make the same kind of impact is already high. In turn, that could give Tjahjanto leverage to finally get the proper greenlight and funding for the Operator spinoff, or even inspire the right producer or financier to take the initiative of approaching him themselves. The Shadow Strays 2 itself could even hold the key to continuing the Night Comes For Us franchise in potentially establishing the two as inhabiting the same world. That is a perfectly plausible scenario given the two’s tonal similarities and style of action; the Shadows and the Six Seas gang of The Night Comes For Us are exactly the kind of underground criminal/assassin organizations that could be revealed as inhabiting the same world in a Split-style twist. Speculation and theorizing aside, Timo Tjahjanto is single-handedly overseeing a strong collection of some of the most exciting action movies on the horizon, and that could be just the beginning for the doors the three could open between them.

The Night Comes For Us and The Shadow Strays are available to stream on Netflix, and Nobody 2 will be released in theaters on August 15th.

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2025-03-16 20:13