Director Simon Cellan Jones joins us to discuss 'The Family Plan 2,' the second installment of what has become a franchise following the 2023 hit. Simon reflects on the fruition of this sequel and the timeline between making the two films, revealing how quickly they moved from the first film's success to developing its follow-up.

Our conversation explores how the family dynamics have shifted now that Dan's secret past has been uncovered. With everyone in on the truth, Simon discusses the challenge of finding new sources of tension and comedy without the original film's central engine. He shares his approach to blending action and violence with earnestness in a family-friendly movie, maintaining the balance that made the first film resonate with audiences.

Simon also discusses the deliberate holiday setting and how Christmas in Europe provides both emotional warmth and high-stakes adventure. We wrap up with reflections on the possibility of a third film, as Simon weighs the excitement of continuing the Morgan family's story against the challenges of sustaining a franchise.

(Photo: Courtesy of Lionsgate)

You are listening to the we need to Talk About Asker podcast, and this is our conversation with Simon Catelyn Jones, director of the family plan 2.

I think that you keep reminding the audience that even though these guys are in a very heightened situation, they are basically a normal family.

And a normal family loves each other and looks after each other, but also fights and is annoyed with each other and has resentments.

We'll see.

I'd like to go to Africa or China or India, somewhere really crazy where there's a real culture clash.

As we are here to talk about The Family Plan 2, the first film famously became Apple TV's most watched film, which must have sparked sequel talks fairly quickly, I'd assume.

When did the second movie's script actually land on your desk?

And what was the timeline between finishing the first movie and then diving into this one?

It was.

It was pretty fast, actually.

I mean, it was a few months.

I mean, David, the writer, he got.

He dove.

Dove in pretty quickly.

He came back with the first draft in a.

In a few months, and we were very excited by that.

We wanted to do some work with him on it.

And I think by maybe July of last year.

No, July.

Wait a minute.

July.

Yeah, July of last year.

Sorry.

We got the green light.

That's.

Yeah, that's.

That's incredibly fast.

Yeah, pretty fast.

And even before that success and the green light, I imagine you had some thoughts about where the Morgans might go once Dan's cover was blown.

Or just as overall, because we hear actors and filmmakers talk so much about how.

Whether they think further into what might happen to their characters.

Their characters.

Were there ideas already forming while you were making the first film?

I think no.

I think that once we got well into the editing process, we thought the film was fun and we.

We liked it.

And, you know, you have to do this thing where you test it with audiences, which is really scary, but it did really well.

So we thought, okay, maybe audiences like it.

So personally, secretly, I was going, you know, we could make it.

We could make another one of these.

And so, you know, I love the.

The road movie format of the first movie, driving across America.

So I wanted it to be a travel movie.

So.

And of course, I live in London, so the idea of London came up, and I went, yeah, my God, that's perfect.

It's perfect.

But also, Paris is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, so we couldn't.

You know, you can't afford to go to too many places because it's such a lot of people.

To pack up.

So you have to be pretty organized.

You have to have a real plan.

But we filmed in a studio in London and a lot of locations in London and then we went to Paris for maybe three, three and a half weeks at the end of the movie.

And yeah, now that you mentioned you living in London and shooting some of it in London, a major part of it in London.

Sure.

At first it sounds great.

It's almost like working from home.

But are there any, I don't know, drawbacks to that?

As in, is it easier for you to.

Or are you more prone to taking work home with you in a situation like that?

Yeah, I mean, for some reason I've spent the last 15 years working almost exclusively in America, but I live in England, so that's kind of great.

And I mean, my wife's American, so I like Americans, but it was a, you know, it's, it's.

You're away from home a lot.

So I was, I was staying in London and my.

My house is a couple of hours outside London, so I wasn't actually living at home, but I was able to go home at weekends.

So that was the perfect thing.

Actually.

I could go home at night to my house in London, just do the work because there's so much work involved.

And then at the weekend I would go home.

And how did your knowledge account into the work?

Well, well, that, you know, this is the thing.

It's like you want to make something creative and you want to make it stylish and visual.

But yeah, you do have to use a lot of logistics and a lot of planning.

So it's that thing.

You don't want to get too into the plan, otherwise you become a machine.

But if you don't do the plan, you.

It's just cha.

And yeah, you're taking the story.

And with that, the family from the States to Europe, the uk, London, Paris, France.

What does changing continents do for a story like this?

Beyond just new scenery?

Like, does it feel like they are further from safety?

Is it about putting them in unfamiliar territory?

They were.

I mean, the idea was that the family was going to spend Christmas in London and they got settled in London and then suddenly they were into the jeopardy, so they had to flee to Paris.

They were escaping there rather than having a holiday there.

So I think it became a different atmosphere and a different feeling.

And there are these.

Of course.

I'll try my best to not lean too much into spoiler territory, but I'd really like to just point out such details as what at first Seem pretty obvious.

But then how do you exactly use that, such as landmarks like the double decker buses for set pieces?

What's the balance to find between leaning into the iconography of these cities and using them for the advantage of action, while at the same time making the place the city feel real, lived in and so on?

Yeah, that's a good question.

You know, it's funny that, because a lot of New Yorkers have never been up the Empire State Building and a lot of Londoners have never been to the Tower of London.

So I wanted to certainly get a few London landmarks, but I also wanted to show an underside of London as well.

I used to be a location manager when I was younger and London was my city.

So I've been driving around every single street of London for the last, you know, years and years and years.

So I really like the fact that I was able to go, here's Westminster Bridge in the Houses of Parliament, but here's a sort of strange street that not many people know about that looks a bit more edgy and a bit more fun.

And as for the Morgan family at large, the first film was of course about them discovering Dan's secret identity.

And now it's Family Affair with, I don't know, a pinch of Mr. And Mrs. Smith, plus the kids, them knowing the truth, or at least some of it, and are becoming more of an active participant rather than just reacting to these revelations.

Does the evolution or the extent to which they are aware of the situation change how you handle the violence, danger?

Well, yeah, I mean, the context of the first film was that the family did not know about his past.

So a lot of the fun was having action scenes where he had to conceal the truth from his family.

So he had to keep them not noticing or being asleep or whatever.

In this movie, they know the secret, if you like.

So, yeah, it's different, but we.

We approach the violence in a different way.

Actually, we, funnily enough, we said this time we said, okay, we did loads and loads of guns in the last film.

There's loads of gun fighting.

What if we have almost no guns in this film?

What if we keep it into.

We have a car chase, we have a fight on a bus, we have two women fighting in a French mansion.

We have a sort of parkour sequence.

So we just wanted to bring some changes, I think.

Yeah, I actually wanted to point out parkour, which definitely raises the bar on the action front, but.

But on the other hand, it isn't exactly making your job easier, is it?

No, it's Very.

I mean, Parkour, as you know, I mean, I'm way, you know, if I tried Parkour, I would break my neck instantly.

But it's really cool.

You have to be so, so fit and so coordinated.

We had, we had a.

We had some great actors.

I mean, Mark.

And Mark Wahlberg does 90% of his own stunts.

But we had, you know, just for safety reasons, you have to have stuntman because we're on roofs.

You know, one slip and you fall 100ft.

And that's.

That's not what we need.

So, yeah, the Parkour was a really fun thing for me because it gave us another way of seeing the high spots of Paris.

You know, the classic feel of Paris, but from rooftops rather than just the Eiffel Tower and the churches.

You know, you're up on these rooftops and it looks so cool and fun.

So I was really grateful to Parkour for letting us take a different route.

And in terms of the film ability of those scenes, it's very.

Well, obviously, whether you're working with a movie star or the least person on the film, safety is everything.

Everyone is equal with safety.

So what you have to do is you have to be safe.

So, you know, we had to have.

We had to rig safety lines.

We had to, for all the crew as well as the actors.

So it was complicated.

It was logistical and it was, you know, every time you put someone on a roof, it's basically add three hours to your shooting day for each scene.

But, you know, if you're careful, you can do it.

And it was so fun being up those roofs.

So I don't regret a moment.

And as we've talked about it, the film is set at Christmas in Europe.

While the original wasn't tied to specific holidays.

Does that Christmas setting change the tone, the stakes, family dynamics?

What does a holiday mean for a film like this?

Well, it is definitely a holiday movie.

It opens pretty much with Thanksgiving, which, as you know, is a huge thing in America.

Then it goes straight onto Christmas.

Wow.

I love Christmas because it's beautiful and cities like Paris and London, they look stunning at Christmas.

But also Christmas brings both joy and love, but also family tension.

And, you know, I think it makes everything more heightened.

So I think it's really fun to be able to see more possibilities of conflict against a sort of joyful Christmas background.

The kids roles and how their involvement changes, shifts as far as action goes, how do you still protect that family friendly dynamic?

While the stakes understandably get higher.

I think that you keep reminding the audience that Even though these guys are in a very heightened situation, they are basically a normal family.

And a normal family loves each other and looks after each other, but also fights and is annoyed with each other and has resentments.

And you get the situation where the parents may be trying to control the kids or the kids are trying to control the parents.

And all the time as families grow older, the kids start to go away and that's the parents nightmare.

But you know, they have to deal with it.

They have to let the kid, you know, it's like that cheesy thing.

If you love them, let them go and then they will come back to you, you know.

But that's not so easy if they're your kids.

If you allow me a half serious question, because there are many incredibly funny, surreal moments even in the first film, such as what I think or probably the most famous one is then fighting with baby Max strapped to his chest.

What were the conversations around whether these moments are something you can push further?

Well, that's another good question.

I think one of my favorite scenes in this was where we have a big car chase throughout the streets of Montmartre in Paris.

Now of course, they're being pursued by evil assassins and you'd expect Mark Wahlberg to be driving because you would imagine that he would be a fantastic getaway driver.

But of course in this scene he's been drugged so he's completely useless.

And the 18 year old kid who we know from before is a bad driver has to drive throughout a major car chase.

So I think that was one of the fun ways of pushing what we did in the first film and evolving it into something different.

The car isn't even automatic.

Exactly, exactly.

And last but not least, as we of course by now established, you've made these two family plan films.

Taking the Morgans from suburban Buffalo to Vegas to Europe.

And if there were ever a third film, where could this family possibly go that feels like a natural escalation without losing what makes these films work.

And I don't even want you to go into detail about what your options are because of course you're not going to tell me like this, but rather how you even begin to think about something like this.

Well, I would like to up the game and go into, you know, we'll see.

I'd like to go to Africa or China or India, somewhere really crazy where there's a real culture clash where they're even more out of their comfort zone.

Simon, once again, thank you so much for your time and get Fasio.

Great, great.

Pleasure.

Very, very nice to see you.