- With funding secured via Warner Bros, a completed screenplay, and the original stars happy to return, Ocean’s 14 is preparing to shoot sometime in 2026 – at least according to George Clooney.
- “It’s just scheduling, so it’s just setting a start date for us,” assures the man behind Danny Ocean.
- Ocean’s 14 release date: TBA.
When Matt Damon’s Linus Caldwell said, “I guess I’ll see you when I see you” to George Clooney’s Danny Ocean, Brad Pitt’s Rusty Ryan, and – by extension – the audience during that airport scene of Ocean’s 13… we all assumed he meant within the next few years. But here we are, almost two decades later, still waiting on Ocean’s 14.
The wait, however, may soon be coming to an end as the debonair Mr Clooney himself provides an extremely promising production update.
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“We just got the budget approved at Warner Bros and we’re trying to set up,” the franchise star confirmed to Variety earlier this month.
“It’s just scheduling, so it’s just setting a start date for us. Probably start in about nine or 10 months, shooting.”
When prompted about reuniting with his co-stars, Clooney shed some light on who we can expect to return: “Yeah, Brad [Pitt], Matt [Damon], and Don [Cheadle], and Julia [Roberts]… I had dinner last night with Julia. They’re all still really dear friends. And so, the chance to work together would be fun.”
A little more recently, during the AFI Fest premiere of his latest film, Jay Kelly directed by Noah Baumbach, George Clooney even made reference to the developing project in relation to the headlines about the $100 million Louvre jewel heist.
“If you’re a professional thief like I am, I was very proud of those guys… I wonder if they’re going to catch these guys. They seem to have done a pretty good job at getting away with it,” he joked.
At the beginning of this year, it was reported that David Leitch was in active negotiation with Warner Bros to direct the long-awaited sequel. At the time of this writing, the stunt extraordinaire turned The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and John Wick filmmaker is ostensibly still attached – furthering his extensive history with Brad Pitt (the director was his stunt double on five occasions prior to their Bullet Train collaboration).
As alluded to earlier, it’s been a long and winding road to Ocean’s 14 (one that hasn’t quite reached its intended destination just yet, but we digress).
The Steven Soderbergh-established franchise essentially halted to a standstill until Gary Ross’ Ocean’s 8 fronted by an all-star cast of Sandra Bullock as Debbie Ocean (sister of Danny), Cate Blanchett as Lou Miller, Anne Hathaway as Daphne Kluger, and plenty more in 2018.
Despite all the time that’s passed since both the trilogy completer and the spin-off, there were occasional signs that Ocean’s 14 wasn’t ever completely dead in the water. Back in 2023, while promoting his most recent directorial effort, The Boys in the Boat starring Joel Edgerton and Callum Turner, George Clooney reignited our collective hopes.
“We have a really good script for another Ocean’s now, so we may end up doing another one. It’s actually a great script,” the man behind Danny Ocean told Uproxx.
“I don’t want to call it [Ocean’s 14]… I mean, the idea is kind of like Going In Style.”
Going In Style, of course, is the 2017 Zach Braff film in which a trio of elderly retirees (Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Alan Arkin) plan to rob a bank after their pensions are scrapped. Incidentally, the three protagonists disguise themselves as The Rat Pack – Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr – who starred in the original Ocean’s 11.
Clooney’s update corroborated the previous assertions of franchise co-star and friend Don Cheadle, who famously portrayed “British” demolitions expert Basher Tarr.
“We were talking about it [after Ocean’s 13], and then Bernie Mac passed, and very quickly we were like… ‘No, we don’t want to do it’,” Cheadle explained in a 2021 interview while promoting his last collab with original trilogy director Steven Soderbergh (No Sudden Move).
“But I just did a movie with Steven and he said, ‘I think there may be a way to do it again. I’m thinking about it.’ And it didn’t go much further than that. But I don’t know… I don’t know who all would be in it. I imagine the main group of us would be in. It would be interesting to see.”
In addition to Mac – who portrayed the charismatic Frank Catton – Carl Reiner, the man behind Saul Bloom, has also passed away during the interim. Meaning Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan will probably need to find a few others to fill out the crew.
The recruits would ostensibly join Elliot Gould as Reuben Tishkoff, Casey Affleck as Virgil Malloy, Scott Caan as Turk Malloy, Eddie Jemison as Livingston Dell, Shaobo Qin as The Amazing Yen – who had a brief cameo in Ocean’s 8 – Cheadle as Basher, perhaps even Julia Roberts as Tess Ocean for another “lookie-lou” with a “bundle of joy” con.
Clooney’s update also came weeks after the plot of the forthcoming Ocean’s 11 prequel starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling now Bradley Cooper was unveiled. Something which the veteran thespian has actually since given his blessing.
According to Showbiz411, it’ll simply be dubbed Oceans with Robbie and Cooper set to portray the parents of Danny (George Clooney) and Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock); spending the duration of this feature-length affair teaching their impressionable young offspring the fundamentals of thieving from the rich in the glamourous Monaco. Heist 101 abroad, if you will.
“The Monaco Grand Prix is the backdrop and there’s a big famous shipping magnate who has a yacht. It’s not inexpensive. And I wanted it to be old-fashioned,” director Jay Roach, who collaborated with Robbie in Bombshell, noted on a previous occasion; Roach himself has since been replaced by Lee Isaac Chung (Minari, Twisters).
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“Margot brought it to me as a kind of old-fashioned epic love story slash adventure disguised as a heist. It is a heist movie still, but it’s very much a love story. And we were both inspired by Hitchcock. To Catch A Thief but also Notorious. It just wants to be a big, big, you know, cinematic spectacle.”
“Margot Robbie’s my mother? I’ve always thought that. And Ryan Gosling is my father, and when you think about it, it makes sense. Truly,” Clooney humorously told Variety during The Boys in the Boat premiere circa 2023.
Based on last reports, the Oceans screenplay is being accomplished by debutante Hollywood scribe Carrie Solomon. Sources noted that Village Roadshow is involved with the co-financing; Robbie’s LuckyChap is, of course, also involved.
