‘The Family Plan 2’ Director Simon Cellan Jones Talks Apple Sequel

Michelle Monaghan, Mark Wahlberg and director Simon Cellan Jones behind the scenes of “The Family Plan 2,” now streaming on Apple TV

Courtesy of Apple TV

When it first premiered on Apple TV in December 2023, The Family Plan became the most-watched movie in the streaming platform’s history.

Naturally, a sequel was in order.

“When we made the first movie, we had a sneaking hope that something might work out,” director Simon Cellan Jones recently said over Zoom. “But then everyone was going, ‘Oh, shall we? Shall we?’ Then, suddenly, it just went, Whoosh! And we went, ‘Oh, my God! We’re shooting tomorrow!’ It happened super-fast.”

Now streaming, The Family Plan 2 is a delightful “mash-up of humor, action, and genuine jeopardy … all wrapped up in a holiday season [package],” Jones proclaimed.

***WARNING! The following contains certain spoilers for the movie!***

Written by returning screenwriter David Coggeshall, The Family Plan 2 sends the Morgans—Dan (Mark Wahlberg), Jessica (Michelle Monaghan), Nina (Zoe Colletti), Kyle (Van Crosby), and Max (Peter and Theodore Lindsey)—to Europe for what is meant to be a relaxing, normal Christmas holiday in London.

“Well, I love America. I’ve spent a lot of my time there,” Jones said. “My wife’s American [and] we do Thanksgiving. But having worked most of the last 10 years in America, I was so thrilled to get back to London. That’s my hometown.”

Of course, nothing is ever truly normal when the patriarch of your family is a former assassin with ties—wanted or not—to some of the most unsavory individuals on the planet. Individuals like Finn Clarke (Kit Harington), Dan’s bastard half-brother who plans to take over their late father’s criminal enterprise and kill the older sibling that supposedly spurned him years ago. Interestingly, Jones confirmed Harington’s casting was indeed an “intentional meta choice” calling back to the actor’s role as a very different kind of bastard, Jon Snow, on HBO’s Game of Thrones.

“That was the cool thing about about Kit,” the director explained. “He played this character for eight seasons of one of the greatest TV shows ever made. Despite his not being able to take his father’s name, he was a kind of heroic, noble figure. And in this one, he’s a dark, malevolent figure. Kit and I both loved seeing his dark side.”

The only thing Clarke shares in common with his Westerosi counterpart is a penchant for glorious facial hair, which Harington hesitantly offered to shave off before filming began. “He said, ‘Listen, I love this beard. How would you feel if we kept it?’” Jones recalled. “We [ended up keeping the beard], because it was a great contrast to Mark, who’s clean-shaven in the movie. There’s also the fact that a beard hides something about you. There’s a little bit of mystery, and he does look good with a beard.”

Finn crawling out of the woodwork with murderous intentions sends Dan, his family, and Nina’s surprisingly chill boyfriend Omar (Reda Elazouar) on a thrilling adventure across London and Paris.

“It was great to take the family out of their comfort zone and into a whole new place,” Jones added. “Whatever anybody says, the family is the heart of this movie. It’s about them being super-relatable … They’re not boring, but they’re a pretty straightforward family—with the exception of a few secrets, of course. What we loved was taking that family and putting them in this bonfire of exciting situations.”

The international backdrop also gave Jones a much wider canvas on which to paint the action, though he wanted to avoid being “too cheesy” with the sequel’s depiction of iconic European cities and their famous landmarks.

“There’s Big Ben, there’s the Thames, but you want to sort of throw them away a little bit,” he said of London. “The script originally had a fight scene on a static double-decker bus and we said, ‘Wait a minute, what if we just drive it through the whole of London?’ We found a way to do that, which made it so much fun.”

Once the second half moves the story to Paris, the viewer gets a little more insight into Dan’s upbringing within the palatial and highly fortified walls of a magnificent mansion on the Île Saint-Louis. In particular, we get a look at Dan’s childhood bedroom that hasn’t changed much over the years. For Jones, it represents a time capsule-like bubble of a young man striving for freedom and independence.

“He was both the son of a crazy underworld crime boss who both loved and treated him very brutally,” the director noted. “But he was also just a kid, he was a teenager. He came of age in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, and every kid wants their bedroom to be their their sanctuary. It’s the way you escape from your parents. We had a lot of fun trying to work out, so there’s posters for Depeche Mode, The Cure, Bruce Lee, [Ferris Bueller’s Day Off]—that sort of stuff.”

Even with a homicidal half-brother and a gaggle of eager bounty hunters nipping at his heels, Dan’s biggest problem is the fact that his daughter has begun dating while studying abroad in the United Kingdom. “It’s every father’s fear, the daughter gets a boyfriend,” Jones continued with a smile. “What do you do about that? Do you tell him that you’ll break his arms if he treats your daughter badly? Do you welcome him? That was a fun thing Mark really keyed into well, and there’s a lot of humor [as a result].”

While it’s still too early to tell whether a third film will be green-lit or not—”Let’s not get ahead of our skis,” Jones cautioned. “Let’s see how this one does.”—there are early “ideas” for where a trilogy capper might take the Morgan family next. “Is Nina going to get married?” the director mused. “Are they going to go to deepest, darkest Africa? Do they go to South America? If there is another one, believe me, they will travel.”

Another mystery to be solved is how Finn could potentially factor into a third installment. Will he accept Dan’s offer to become a member of the family and serve as a Hannibal Lecter-style advisor from prison, “or is he going to be trying to destroy the family?” Jones asked. “Those are the questions.”

As he waits for Apple to hand down a verdict on the The Family Plan’s future, the filmmaker is carefully considering his next project, which could end up being a tonal about-face from his last two movies. As a child of the ‘70s, he’s hankering to direct something in the vein of pulse-pounding conspiracy thriller like the Robert Redford classic, Three Days of the Condor.

“Part of me wants to go dark,” he concluded. “[Just like] Kit played a hero and then a villain, part of me wants to make a really angry, messy political thriller—or something brutal. So watch this space.”

The Family Plan 2 is now streaming on Apple TV