‘Den of Thieves’ almost became a TV show, not a movie franchise (Exclusive)

It’s very early in the year, but I imagine it’ll be hard to come up with another 2025 movie that’s more metal than “Den of Thieves 2: Panther.” But if this gritty, pulpy franchise had gone a little differently during the development process, we would have been stripped of the title — and indeed, the Den of Thieves films entirely. But we were very close to getting a Den of Thieves series.

“When I was doing my research for Dan 1 back in the day, I came across so many different heists, and I got to know the cops who were investigating them, and I had so much material that we knew we were going to build a franchise.” – writer/director Christian Gudegast told me in a recent interview, “There was a time when it was going to be a TV series. That’s why I mapped out longer for (Gerard Butler) who plays Nick and then O’Shea (Jackson Jr.) who plays Donnie, their arcs and other heists around the world, so it was planned from the beginning.”

This was the first time I heard about the possibility of it becoming a series, but Gudegast said the “brief moment” when it could happen was a result of industry trends at the time:

“It was written as a feature film, and there was a time when they were taking feature scripts and turning them into TV series. This happened to another project I was working on. In other words, I had so much material that would have been easy to make, but then we made the movie and here we are.’

I liked it the dirty sweat of the first Den of Thieves and while I didn’t enjoy the sequel as much, the climactic heist of the next film is a beautifully crafted piece of process-driven cinema that takes us step by step through the elaborate heist of the World Diamond Center. Each heist, according to the writer/director, is a “very, very close representation” of a heist that took place in the real world, and all that deep research paid off. For me, the heists are the highlight of these films because Gudegast stages them in a way that feels instantaneous and intuitive.

It’s easy to imagine what the Den of Thieves TV show might have been like, where every big heist served as the climax of a TV season, but I for one am grateful that they were made into movies. The relationship between Big Nick Butler and Donnie Jackson is an important part of these stories, but so far it hasn’t reached the magnetic level of Johnny Yuta and Bodhi in Point Break or Brian O’Connor and Dom Toretto in The Fast and the Furious. Having many more hours to explore these relationships on the show would have been helpful, but there’s just as much chance that the TV format could weigh the whole thing down and surround it with excess and bloat that surpassing many modern TV shows. I’d rather put out a new movie every few years that has the potential to feel special than another show that’s overhyped because the algorithm calls for it to be ten episodes instead of six.

You can hear my full interview with Gudegast on today’s episode of the /Film Daily podcast:

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