Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane was Joe Carnahan's feature debut, but it's one of those super-low-budget first films that often gets left out of then conversation. He then hopped on to Narc, which had a budget something like a thousand times that of his first movie but still came in under $10 million.

And it was with Narc that he really made the foundations of his fanbase and critical reputation.

It's a brooding cop thriller with Ray Liotta and Jason Patric chewing it up, and hungrily. This film allowed them to point guns, sweat, shout and have remarkable facial hair. Narc has one foot in Tony Scott and the other in The French Connection.

Carnahan is out doing the press rounds now for The Grey, his man vs. wolf Arctic survival film. Speaking to Jeux Actu, he had to field some questions about sequels to The A-Team and to Narc.

Unsurprisingly, Carnahan said that the studio would have wanted more from The A-Team's box-office in order to push ahead on a second film. Reagrding Narc, however, he seems to have said that he's spoken to Ray Liotta about the possibility of a follow-up just days ago, and if they can find a way to do it cheaply enough - ie. without studio interference - then they're on.

I say he seems to have said that, because my French comprehension is appalling. Here's the quote as Jeux Actu have it:
J'ai parl? ? Ray Liotta l'autre nuit de la suite de Narc et lui ait d?crit le d?but. Si je pouvais faire ce film pour 10 millions de dollars et faire ce que je veux, je signerais tout de suite. Le contr?le cr?atif est plus important pour moi qu'avoir mon nom dans une grosse production.

Should the film go ahead, it won't be right away. For one thing, there's obviously no screenplay yet, and for another, if all goes to plan, Carnahan's next film will be the Pablo Escobar thriller, Killing Pablo.

UPDATE: And it seems the French site were just lifting from Moviehole. Here's their original version of the quote:
I was talking to Ray Liotta the other night about a Narc sequel. I told him the opening? if I could do that movie for like ten million bucks and not be bothered and be left to do my thing I would do it in a second. Creative control means more to me than having my name on a big-budget thing.

And credit to Carnahan for commenting:
The good thing that came out of A-Team not being successful is that I would never have made The Grey, I?d be working on A-Team 2 right now. And that would have been a bigger bummer to me.

That's a great outlook, even from a marketing perspective.