Christian Gudegast Takes Den of Thieves Global
The director of the heist thriller and its sequel wants to keep the franchise “going as long as we possibly can.”
When Christian Gudegast wrote the first draft for Den of Thieves, a grimy cat-and-mouse thriller inspired by the longtime Angeleno’s real-life interactions with the criminal underbelly of Los Angeles, Michael Mann hadn’t made his acclaimed crime film Heat yet. So by the time Gudegast made his directorial debut with Den of Thieves in 2017, he was a little amused when people called it “dirtbag Heat.”
“The funny thing is, is that I wrote the initial outline draft, before Heat was ever released,” Gudegast tells Inverse.
But while Heat is widely accepted as a cinematic classic, Gudegast had a couple of issues with the movie. “Being from LA and having tons of friends who were cops and gangsters, [I realized that] the setting of the world, what they wore and where they lived, doesn't exist,” Gudegast says. “That's a stylized version of cops and criminals. The world that I knew was completely different, and that's represented in Den 1.”
The first Den of Thieves was a sweaty, nasty little B-movie thriller starring Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. as a cop and a career criminal who find an unlikely match in each other, even as Butler’s LASD Detective Nick O’Brien tries to hunt down Jackson Jr.’s heist mastermind, Donnie Wilson. But the second film, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, transports them out of LA and across the ocean to Europe, where the duo take their chase global. For Gudegast, that was the great appeal of making Den of Thieves 2 — to “bring our sort of very American characters into a European setting and what that all means.” And he hopes to do it for many movies more. “We'll keep it going as long as we possibly can,” Gudegast says.
Inverse spoke to Gudegast about the real-life inspiration behind Den of Thieves 2, taking Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. on a Eurotrip, and just how many sequels he has planned.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Gerard Butler and O'Shea Jackson Jr. team up in Den of Thieves 2.
Den of Thieves 2 scales up from Den of Thieves — it's a globetrotting adventure versus the LA-based setting of the first one. Was that something you were excited to explore?
Yes. We wanted to come over to Europe and make a blend between American and European cinema, and so that was by design from the very beginning. And to bring our sort of very American characters into a European setting and what that all means, how that all plays out, that's what we wanted to explore.
I'd love to ask about the real-life diamond heist that inspired Den of Thieves 2. How did you learn about it, and why did it inspire you?
I approached the people involved, what's called the Diamond Police, part of the Belgian Federal Police, [and] the actual commanding officers and the investigators. I got to know them, met with them, went to the actual place where everything happened, and really got into the specifics of how these huge, brilliant heists were done. And it's within the details that it's fascinating. We just wanted to explore how these things actually went down and how they pulled them off, because they're so brilliant and complicated and complex. Then also examine the people behind it, involved, on both sides. And all the characters are based on people that I met along the way during the research journey, and they are very close representations of the actual people involved.
What details struck you the most when you were doing your research and meeting with the people involved in the heist?
On the law enforcement side, it was how they got into the Diamond Center [that] was just fascinating, brilliant. I would never think of it. And the technology used and really the amount of time it takes, it's very meticulous. I mean, the discipline it takes to do it is extraordinary, and that was fascinating to me.
“Bringing Nick and Donnie to Europe was just fun in and of itself.”
And then the types of people on the gangster side, they're fascinating, they're brilliant, and they could do anything. They're very capable people, and for them, it's really the challenge of it. It's like a puzzle, you know, how do we figure this out, that excites them. The illicit part of it just obviously makes it more exciting, but they enjoy that to beat the systems, both security and personnel-wise. Meeting them and getting to know them and exploring them was endlessly fascinating.
What was most exciting for you about placing your fictional characters in something so deeply inspired by reality?
Bringing Nick and Donnie to Europe was just fun in and of itself, exploring those two very American characters, now in a different world on opposite sides, but then there's a familiarity between the two of them. It's like when you travel around the world and you see somebody you know from home, there's this immediate camaraderie. That's what kind of happens to them. Then suddenly they're there in this strange, dangerous world, and they’ve developed this bond. Exploring that relationship between the two of them and how they behave in this foreign world, that's the core of the film.
Would you say that you took some creative liberties with the depiction of the heist that you took inspiration from, or did you try to make it as accurate to real life as possible?
You pick and choose because it's a fictionalized version. Then we try to make it as accurate and authentic as we possibly can. But then there's certain things you can't reveal and that the people I work with ask, "Let's not do that. Maybe let's change it to this," certain things you can't expose. But really, 90% of it, or even more, is accurate and authentic as it can possibly be.
Gerard Butler in the first Den of Thieves.
What do you think people would be surprised about the most to learn that’s actually realistic about these heists?
The technology used, which is all real, and the ability to crack the code, and how they do it, is brilliant. It's accurate and it's genius to see them pull it off. But it's all about the tension of actually doing [it], it's the big game. You prepare for something for a long, long time, and now it's go time. There's almost like a military sort of aspect to it, right? You drill, drill, drill, drill, drill. In athletics, it's like sports, you drill for something, you train for something, and then it's fight night, and you have to go execute. And the execution thereof, the tension, the stress, the physical, the physicality of it, is what we really explored.
“We're ready to go [for more sequels], and it's all based on actual heists.”
What I found so interesting about the heist, when they plan it and execute it and pull it off, is the combination of the high tech and low tech. There's the ingenuity with some of the low-tech innovations that they have, like the little ice cream carton, for example.
And that's what they did. It always is that, right? Yeah, it's always both. Those genius little things like that are fascinating.
The ending of Den of Thieves 2 sort of leaves it open as to whether Nick and Donnie will cross paths again. Do you have any intentions of making a third Den of Thieves, and if so, would you draw from other real-life heists as inspiration again?
Yes, it is already planned out, mapped out, researched. Yes, we're ready to go, and it's all based on actual heists. We have a new environment, new world, that we're going into, and for sure, for three and four. We'll keep it going as long as we possibly can.
