Making movies is tough business. Lots of film ideas never even get made, while others eventually happen but still take years before anything ever happens. It’s been more than a decade and a half since the first Avatar film, and we’re not even halfway through with those franchise plans. But now it feels like Chris Hemsworth’s much smaller action franchise Extraction may take almost as long.
Chris Hemsworth’s Extraction (available with a Netflix subscription) was a solid action movie that was successful enough that it spawned a sequel. Extraction 2 came out three years after the first film, which is just about right for a sequel like that. Extraction 3 was confirmed almost immediately after the success of part two, which implied we’d see it in short order, but that’s not looking like the case.
Chris Hemsworth made comments about a year ago that Extraction 3 was expected to go into production this year, which would have put the movie likely coming out in 2026. However, a year later, franchise director Sam Hargrave told Collider that he hopes for the movie to start filming next year, which might put the film out the year after that. He said…
The plan is to turn over in 2026 … We’ll roll cameras in 2026, we’ll see how it goes. A lot of it’s based on [Hemsworth’s] schedule with Avengers, which has a lot of moving parts, but that’s the plan, to shoot in ’26 and I’m assuming the release will be some time in 2027. But, of course, I can neither officially confirm or deny these dates!
Honestly, this sounds like what James Cameron would say about Avatar 2 whenever he was asked, and that movie took over a decade to actually happen. It’s clearly uncertain at this point if Extraction 3 will film this year, which means it all being pushed back by another year is distinctly possible.
It sounds like the major stumbling block is the production of Avengers: Secret Wars. The follow-up to Avengers: Doomsday is currently set to release in December 2027, and while we don’t know when production on that movie will start, it will likely be sometime next spring (a year after the production of Doomsday began) as the film will come out a year after that movie.
The question is how much Chris Hemsworth will be needed for Secret Wars, and that may not be something anybody even knows yet, as we don’t know if the script is even done. Assuming Hargrave knows at least a little, this would seem to indicate that Hemsworth will at least be in Secret Wars. This is something which is far from certain, considering many fans are wondering if Thor might be about to die in the MCU, something Hemsworth himself inadvertently touched off.
If Thor does continue to move forward, then we also need to consider the possibility that Hemsworth could be needed for other MCU films after Secret Wars. If he is, that might delay Extraction 3 even more. I guess we’ll just have to keep waiting.