I doubt it would make enough to get Angelina Jolie, let alone the rest of them, even if she got ALL the profit. But yes, I love it, and wish they would make more.
Just replace her with another mediocre actress. One with a better attitude than Jolie. I doubt most viewers would mind. It would hurt marketing though.
I have ideas for a "Hackers 2" better than that. All these "30 years later" sequels are dripped in nostalgia too much imo. The Hacking scene is a lot more wilder now. It's hard to imagine either of the leads not having their own family or being divorced with kids or something. They can still be cool to an older audience I guess but you need to let the under 40 crowd relate with them.
My idea is something like "Summer Wars" (anime movie, highly recommend) meets the character building and realism of "The Joker" with the humor,fun and style of the original "Hackers". I'll use layman friendly but still technical stories of actual hacks from various threat intel reports I've read over the years that make anything you seen in movies sound boring. Most of you in tech also read these reports but what most of you don't read is the personal details of the actors behind them. APTs and their organization as part of different governemnt units (china for example have MSS and different units in the PLA) but also those guys don't always work strictly for the state. I have seen first hand guys doing whitehat security work but I also had extensive intel on APTs in their region using those very specific techniques lol, but don't take my word for it either directly or via informal association (russia amd criminal groups for example) many of the APT attacks you hear about involve regular people which always made me think of how easy it would be to weave them into a movie plot. I would also like to add a blue teamer's perspective: the shock, the awe, the excitement, the chaos, the friendly fire! Of what happens when blueteams outside of security vendor companies go toe-to-toe with APT actors.
Honestly, I am really keen on inspiring younger people because the talent shortage is real (and you do get paid well in our industry).90%+ of people I interact with these days work in infosec but I'm hard pressed to find anyone who's even heard of "the manifesto".
Believe it or not, I already have the entire storyline ready to go, with built in conflict between the now-broken-up Crash and Burn, a la the broken up Jolie and Miller. :)
