Robert Rodriguez’s newest family-friendly action-adventure We Can Be Heroes is a hit on Netflix—so much so that Netflix has just greenlit a sequel to the movie a little more than a week after it debuted.
According to reports, We Can Be Heroes was seen in approximately 44 million households during the week of December 25 through December 31. The film follows a group of superhero kids as they attempt to save their superhero parents from the aliens who have abducted them.
The sequel will be the fourth in Rodriguez’s nearly 30-year career. He directed Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams in 2002, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over in 2003, and Spy Kids 4-D: All the Time in the World in 2011. He also followed up Sin City with the sequel Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For in 2014, which is (obviously) not a movie for children.
Although Rodriguez broke into the moviemaking scene in 1992 with the independent film El Mariachi, which was famously made for only $7,000 and financed through money he received donating plasma, the Mexican-American director’s first movie was a short film he made a year prior, called Bedhead.
It’s easy to see how something like Bedhead was the first step that Rodriguez took in filmmaking 30 years ago. The film tells the story of Rebecca (played by Rodriguez’s sister Rebecca), a girl who develops telekinetic powers after taking a bump to the head.
In We Can Be Heroes, Rodriguez includes a character named A Capella (Lotus Blossom), a girl who also has telekinesis. This time, however, Rodriguez gives the superpower a twist and allows the telekinetic powers to be used through A Capella’s singing voice. We Can Be Heroes also reunites fans with the title characters of Rodriguez’s 2005 kids’ film The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D.