Sicario 3 Moves Ahead Without Taylor Sheridan Writing

Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin are set to return for Sicario 3 after reading Steven Knight’s latest draft, with Padraic McKinley directing and producers shopping the film to studios for a shoot at the start of next year. Taylor Sheridan created the series and wrote the first two films. He is not the writer attached to this package.

Black Label Media and Thunder Road are taking the trio, the script and the new director to market together. Plot details are being kept under wraps. Several studios have already shown interest, and no distributor is locked.

EXCLUSIVE: Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin are returning for 'Sicario 3.'

The 'Sicario' franchise was created by Taylor Sheridan. The first film in 2015 as a surprise hit featuring not only strong performances from its three leads, but also launching Denis… pic.twitter.com/vvip87IN2W

— Deadline (@DEADLINE) October 6, 2026

The Stars Had to Like the Script First

The three leads came back only after they read Knight’s most recent draft. Producers then ran a wide director search in which Black Label, Thunder Road and the actors held their own meetings. McKinley, whose first feature The Weight reached U.S. theaters on September 18, 2026, won the job.

McKinley and Knight are now revising the script with notes from the stars. That arrangement is the real change in how this franchise is being built. Sheridan is no longer the person the actors are waiting on. The actors are the filter.

Brolin spent years sounding unsure. On August 7, 2025, he said he had once written the third film off, then heard otherwise from producer Molly Smith.

I mentioned at some point, I don’t know, maybe just to be contrary. I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s never going to happen.’ And then the producers showed up and Molly and, you know, ‘That’s not true!’ Which is fine. And then I just heard recently that it’s very, very real. So, cool.

Josh Brolin, actor

On August 21, 2026, while promoting Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, he said the film “is happening” and that production would start “soon.” The October 5 package is the first time that claim has a writer, a director and all three original leads attached at once.

Blunt’s calendar is crowded in a useful way. She just starred in The Devil Wears Prada 2 and has wrapped A Quiet Place Part 3. Brolin appears next in 20th Century’s Whalefall, which opens October 16. Del Toro is coming off an Oscar nomination for One Battle After Another.

Sheridan Was Named the Writer, Then Replaced

On October 4, Sheridan was publicly described as having written Sicario 3, a detail tucked into coverage of his move toward NBCUniversal. On October 5, the package going out to buyers named Knight instead. That is a one-day swing on the one credit fans still treat as sacred.

Sheridan has been the obvious missing piece since Sicario: Day of the Soldado in 2018, and the obvious unavailable one since Yellowstone turned him into a television operation. Thad Luckinbill, who produces Sicario with his brother Trent and Smith, also acts in Sheridan’s Lioness. He had said he hoped Sheridan could find the time. The time did not appear.

Knight is the Oscar-nominated writer of Dirty Pretty Things and the creator of Peaky Blinders. He wrote the Tom Hardy one-man thriller Locke and is also writing the next James Bond film for Denis Villeneuve, who directed the first Sicario and is not returning to this one. The man drafting 007 for Villeneuve is the man drafting the Sicario film Villeneuve will not shoot.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The cast: Blunt, del Toro and Brolin are on board to return after reading Knight’s draft.
• The crew: McKinley directs; Knight writes; Smith, the Luckinbills, Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee and Ed McDonnell produce.
• The calendar: Producers want cameras up at the top of the year, meaning early 2027.
• The market: The film is being taken to studios, with more than one buyer already circling.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The story: No plot has been disclosed, including how Kate Macer reenters after Soldado.
• The studio: Lionsgate and Sony both handled earlier chapters; neither is attached here.
• Sheridan’s role: He created the series. He is not the writer on the draft the stars approved.

Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen, the pair behind recent Mission: Impossible films, had already written a draft. Brolin said in 2024 that McQuarrie was no longer involved. Knight’s pages are the ones that moved the actors, which is why they are the pages that matter.

Soldado Cut Kate Macer on Purpose

Blunt’s FBI agent Kate Macer was the audience in 2015, the person who still believed the law might hold. Stefano Sollima, who directed the sequel, left her out because that film did not want a moral guide.

Emily Blunt is an amazing actress, but her role was sort of a moral guidance for the audience. In Soldado, we don’t have that.

Stefano Sollima, director of Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Smith never treated that as the end of the character. On October 28, 2023, she said the plan was to get “the cast back together with Benicio, Emily, and Josh,” and that the 2023 writers’ strike had slowed “this last draft.” She also said Sheridan “always envisioned it as a trilogy,” and that there was “no point in making it unless we can do justice to the true fans of Sicario.”

Blunt was not waiting by the phone. In February 2024 she called the comeback talk hearsay, because nothing firm had reached her.

I hear rumblings, but there’s nothing firm. Because I haven’t seen anything, I think it’s hearsay.

Emily Blunt, actor

Her return is the correction Soldado refused. It is also the image people still want from this series: Macer in that Juárez convoy, trying to keep her face still while the men beside her treat the law as a costume. Another firefight with Graver and Alejandro is the easy movie. Putting Macer back in the car is the harder one, and it is the one the producers have chased for eight years.

Who Is Directing Sicario 3?

Villeneuve launched himself with the first film, then moved on to Dune and Bond. Sollima took the sequel and has not been invited back. McQuarrie circled the third film and left. McKinley is the name that survived a search the actors joined in person.

WHO IS IN AND WHO IS NOT

• In front of the camera: Blunt as Macer, Brolin as CIA officer Matt Graver, del Toro as Alejandro Gillick.
• Behind it: McKinley directing Knight’s script, with the stars still giving notes.
• Not returning to write: Sheridan, whose docket is the Yellowstone universe and a new studio home.
• Not returning to direct: Villeneuve, Sollima and McQuarrie.

The live objection is Villeneuve’s absence, not Sheridan’s. A Sicario film without Villeneuve already exists. It opened bigger than the original and still felt smaller, because the dread sat in Roger Deakins’s frames and Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score as much as in the gunfights. McKinley’s job is to get some of that pressure back without the man who invented it on screen.

Lionsgate and Sony Already Split This Series

Lionsgate released the original in 2015. In April 2017, after a fight over dates and marketing, Black Label pulled the sequel out of Lionsgate for North America and took it to Sony. Sony released Day of the Soldado in the United States on June 29, 2018. Lionsgate kept a slice of the foreign markets. The third film is now being walked into the market as a complete package, which is another way of saying the last two partners are not presumed.

The original was a critic’s hit that still had to claw into wide release. It premiered at Cannes on May 19, 2015, went limited on September 18, then wide on October 2, and took in $12.1 million in that wide weekend. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes backed it at 91% from 279 reviews, with a Metascore of 82 from 48 critics, and it drew three Oscar nominations for cinematography, original score and sound editing. Black Label made it on a $30 million production budget.

Soldado spent more, opened wider and cooled the reviews. Sony put it into 3,055 theaters, where it opened to $19,007,566 on a $35 million budget. Critics were less kind: a Metascore of 61 out of 100 from 50 reviews, 21 points under the original.

THE TWO FILMS IN THE LEDGER

Domestic totals sit at $46,889,293 for the original and $50,072,235 for the sequel. The sequel won the opening weekend and lost the argument. That is the bet a new studio is being asked to take: pay for the first film’s cast, accept the second film’s business, and hope Knight and McKinley get closer to 2015 than to 2018.

One Feature Film Got Him Sicario 3

McKinley spent years as an editor on films including 17 Again, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Jude Law’s Alfie before directing The Weight, a 1933 Oregon story with Ethan Hawke as a widowed mechanic and Russell Crowe as a warden dangling early release for a gold run. It premiered at Sundance on January 26, 2026, played Berlin on February 17, and opened in the United States through Vertical on September 18.

Critics were far warmer to that debut than they were to Soldado. Rotten Tomatoes lists 94% from 129 reviews, and Metacritic gives it a 70 from 28 critics. Hawke helped build the film after working with McKinley on The Good Lord Bird, and they pointed at 1970s survival pictures, Sorcerer and Cool Hand Luke, as the mood they wanted. Tension in tight spaces is the part of his résumé that maps onto Sicario. Matching Villeneuve’s border dread is the part that does not yet exist on film.

That is a large leap for a director with one feature. It is also why the stars’ meetings matter. They are not hiring a famous name. They are hiring someone whose footage they sat through, after years of famous names who could not get in a room at the same time.

A Decade of Near Misses Produced This Package

The third film has been a rumor with a pulse since the sequel left theaters. The pulse kept fading.

HOW SICARIO 3 GOT HERE

1. June 29, 2018: Day of the Soldado opens in the United States without Blunt, and talk of a third film starts almost immediately.
2. April 2017: Black Label moves the sequel from Lionsgate to Sony in North America after a fight over release plans, a split that still hangs over the third film’s studio search. (The deal predates the sequel’s opening; the hangover did not.)
3. May 2022: Brolin says a version of the third film has been “written and rewritten,” and that it deserves to be made “in the way that we want to make it.”
4. October 28, 2023: Smith says the idea is Blunt, del Toro and Brolin, and that the writers’ strike has slowed the latest draft.
5. February 2024: Blunt calls the comeback “hearsay.”
6. August 7, 2025: Brolin says the project is “very, very real.”
7. August 21, 2026: Brolin says it “is happening” and will shoot “soon.”
8. October 4, 2026: Sheridan is described as the writer of Sicario 3.
9. October 5, 2026: The package that is actually going to buyers names Knight, McKinley and the original three stars.

Eleven years after the first film, the people who can still get this made are the ones who were in it. Sheridan’s success is the reason his trilogy cannot use him. Villeneuve’s success is the reason it cannot use him either. What remains is a writer known for tight, mean talk, a director with one acclaimed feature, three actors who will not sign a draft they do not trust, and a studio slot that has not been sold. Early 2027 is the target. The wolves are in the room. The money is still in the hall.