Escape Room: Tournament of Champions Director Weighs in on Franchise’s Future Potential

The original Escape Room introduced audiences to a world in which the sinister organization Minos would subject escape room enthusiasts to puzzles that would come with deadly consequences, unbeknownst to them, as the film itself would also unveil just how far-reaching their control really was. With the sequel Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, the adventures of the series is continued in a relatively linear fashion, but audiences will surely be left to wonder about just how many places Minos has made their influence known, with director Adam Robitel addressing the directions he could see the franchise exploring in the future. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions hits theaters on July 16th.

“There’s innumerable ways to kill people in cool spaces but, for me, it’s gonna be about, if the franchise continues to go on, I would love to do an origin story of the puzzle maker or even … I pitched, imagine starting an Escape Room movie, but you’re in the eyes of the people watching the game, like the assholes who are betting on it, and they get thrown in a room,” Robitel revealed to ComicBook.com. “There’s a lot of ways to skin a cat. We talked, what if this is a giant, Jeff Bezos, Amazon sort of structure, what if there are vendors who work on the room unwittingly, making the little thing that’s going to explode or the piece of sand, and then they get pulled into the room? What’s the infrastructure behind Minos? There’s been a lot of stuff we’ve played with.”

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is the sequel to the box office hit psychological thriller that terrified audiences around the world. In this installment, six people unwittingly find themselves locked in another series of escape rooms, slowly uncovering what they have in common to survive…and discovering they’ve all played the game before.

Robitel also directed the original Escape Room, though has also taken part in later entries of other franchises, with the director addressing whether he personally would like to continue to develop this series or allow other filmmakers to step in to put their own stamp on the concept.

“I’m a storyteller. I don’t like doing the same thing again and, to me, if it doesn’t reinvent itself, then why does it exist?” Robitel admitted. “That being said, the market wants a certain thing and it was that fine balance between giving them some new information … I think there’s a really cool reveal in this sequel of how f-cked and how manipulative Minos really is. But, look, I would love to do origin stories or lateral stories or even do a prequel of some kind. There’s a lot of ways you can skin that cat, but I never try to get ahead of myself and every movie has to succeed and then there has to be a desire for it.”

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions hits theaters on July 16th.

Would you like to see the series expand with spinoffs or prequels? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!