Filming has begun on Shadow Has Fallen, the third season of the fast-growing Has Fallen television franchise, with Game of Thrones star Iwan Rheon and Downton Abbey's Brendan Coyle among the new additions to the cast.
It's now been confirmed that filming has kicked off on the new series, with production taking place in the UK and South Africa. The six-episode season, a Canal+ Original Creation, is once again written by series creator Howard Overman, who is best known for his work on Misfits, War of the Worlds and Hit Point.
Ritu Arya (The Umbrella Academy) and Tewfik Jallab (Spiral) return, reprising their lead roles as fearless MI6 operative Zara Taylor and former French Secret Service agent Vincent Taleb.
They are joined by Rheon (Game of Thrones), Coyle (Downton Abbey) and Atandwa Kani (Black Panther) who have all been announced as new cast additions.
The new run follows the worldwide success of Paris Has Fallen, the 2024 action thriller, and comes ahead of the global broadcast of Apollo Has Fallen this autumn.
Those two series expanded on the Has Fallen cinematic universe launched by Gerard Butler's trio of films, all of which saw the actor star as Secret Service agent Mike Banning.
It's been quite a long-lasting franchise, with the run initially beginning with Olympus Has Fallen in 2013, which saw Banning fight to rescue the US president after a North Korean-backed assault on the White House. The film grossed more than $170 million worldwide against a reported budget of around $70 million, enough to spawn a series.
The 2016 sequel London Has Fallen relocated the action to the UK capital, where Banning protects the president amid a co-ordinated terror attack during a state funeral. It proved the biggest earner of the three, grossing more than $205 million worldwide. The 2019 entry, Angel Has Fallen, saw Banning framed for an attempt on the president's life, adding a further $147 million.
Together the three films took more than 523 million dollars at the global box office, establishing the Has Fallen name as a durable action brand before the franchise expanded to television with Paris Has Fallen.
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The synopsis for season 3 reads: "When a prison bus is ambushed in a sudden, brutal attack in Mozambique, an unassuming British prisoner, Miles Iwan Rheon is extracted by Vincent and Zara, igniting a chain reaction that will threaten global infrastructure, world leaders, and the very idea of government itself.
"Miles is a whistle-blower who has in his possession a totally untraceable, unstoppable cyber weapon capable of hijacking any computerised system, from banks to military drones. He helped the British government to develop the cyber weapon, but now he has stolen it. The question is, why? And whose side is he on…"
Marco Kreuzpaintner (The Lazarus Project) and Alice Troughton (The Living and the Dead) are attached to direct, with Overman teasing that the third season marks a step up in ambition.
In a statement announcing the production kick-off, Overman said: "There's a scale to season 3 that we've been building towards since Paris Has Fallen, and all of us at Urban Myth Films are thrilled that Studiocanal chose to back the future of this franchise in such a timely fashion.
"Shadow Has Fallen will see Vincent and Zara embark on their most demanding and morally challenging mission, a mission that takes them into the very heart of Southern Africa."
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Apollo Has Fallen will be released in autumn 2026. Shadow Has Fallen is currently filming.
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