Sicario 3 locks in Blunt, Del Toro and Brolin to close out the trilogy

Emily Blunt is coming back to the border. Nearly a decade after the 2015 original made her the moral conscience of one of the decade's most acclaimed thrillers, Blunt is set to return for Sicario 3 alongside Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin — reuniting the full core cast for the first time since that film. Deadline broke the news, confirmed by multiple other outlets.

The project is being produced by Black Label Media and Thunder Road, with the team planning to shop it to distributors — a departure from the first two films, which were backed by Lionsgate. According to que.es, producers intend to spark a bidding war among studios. Filming is targeted for the first quarter of 2027, though no release date has been set.

Blunt will reprise her role as FBI agent Kate Macer, Del Toro returns as assassin Alejandro Gillick, and Brolin is back as handler Matt Graver. Brolin and Del Toro both appeared in the 2018 sequel, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, but Blunt did not. Her absence was widely seen as a factor in that film's more divided reception. According to IGN, all three actors signed on after reading the script, and the draft is currently being revised with notes from the trio. The cast also interviewed potential directors before settling on their choice.

That director is Padraic McKinley, an editor-turned-filmmaker whose credits include The Weight and The Exorcism. Sicario 3 will be his third feature as director. He is working from a script by Steven Knight — the creator of Peaky Blinders and, according to IGN, the writer of the next James Bond film — who replaces Taylor Sheridan, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter behind both previous Sicario films. Sheridan has not been confirmed to have any involvement in the new project.

The film is being positioned not as another franchise installment but as a trilogy capper, according to Dark Horizons. Plot details have not been disclosed. Producers are Molly Smith, Trent Luckinbill, Thad Luckinbill, Basil Iwanyk, Ed McDonnell and Erica Lee.

The original Sicario, directed by Denis Villeneuve, was released in 2015 with a screenplay by Taylor Sheridan. The sequel, Day of the Soldado, was directed by Stefano Sollima and released in 2018. Earlier this summer, Josh Brolin publicly stated that a third film was happening soon, though he offered no details, according to IGN.

Why it matters — The return of Emily Blunt — absent from the divisive sequel — alongside the full original cast signals that Sicario 3 is aiming to be a genuine conclusion to the story that began in 2015, with a high-profile creative team and a studio bidding process that will determine where and when audiences see it.

Reported by deadline.com, hollywoodreporter.com, darkhorizons.com, ign.com, ew.com, que.es