Inside Man 2: Inside Men?

If Spike Lee et al were half as clever as the bank robbers in their movie, they would call the sequel to their surprise 2006 hit “Inside Men” instead of the generic “Inside Man 2″. But then again, this is Hollywood, which was oblivious to the opportunity to call the Schumacher Batman 3 movie “Batman and Robin”, while keeping the title of “Batman Forever” for the forth installment, instead of the other way around. Get it? Batman 4 = “Batman Forever”? Anyways, apparently no one got it then, either. I bring all that up to say this: God, it’s boring. It’s Sunday, my football team got their ass kicked on opening weekend, and the biggest news of the week is that Spike Lee is coming back to direct the sequel to a moderately hit movie called “Inside Man”.

Anyways, here’s THR with the sequel news:

A sequel to Spike Lee’s “Inside Man” is moving forward at Universal, with Terry George in negotiations to write the screenplay and Lee coming back to direct the Brian Grazer-produced pic.

“Inside Man 2,” as the project is tentatively being called, will pick up on the characters and dynamic but not the storyline of the original. The first “Inside Man,” which was penned by Russell Gewirtz, centered on a standoff between a bank robber (Clive Owens) and a hostage negotiator (Denzel Washington) at a New York bank.

Lee says he foresees that the new film will continue the relationship between the two main characters but in a new high-tension situation. “I want the script to be even better than Russell’s, and Russell wrote a really good script,” he said.

So wait, the sequel will bring back the same bank robber and the same cop negotiator? That sounds kind of stupid. Why don’t they just move the negotiator over to another case? How much sense does it make that the same robber and the same negotiator ends up in the same situation, only “more intense”?

But eh, whatever. At least Spike Lee isn’t making movies about the Evils of Whitey. I guess we can all be thankful for that.

Below: During the shooting of “Inside Man”, an oblivious Denzel Washington tries to gauge his chances of getting into Jodie Foster’s pants.