Daniel Cormier has been cast in 'Warrior' series: 'The show will be in the spirit of the movie'

Warrior was released 10 years ago Thursday, and people who loved the boxing drama the most will be pleased to know director Gavin O'Connor has a sequel in the works.

Well, it's not really a sequel.

It's a long story.

O'Connor explained it all during an interview with Discussing Film:

"I have explored the idea of doing it as a second movie. But the truth is, I was never able to figure out how to do it and make it better than the first one. I knew I just didn’t want to have one brother in the other brothers’ corner and how he’s coaching the brother and… it just all felt so f—ing cheesy to me that I was just never able to do it. I knew if I couldn’t make a better movie, or at least make something that had some kind of artistic merit that’s worth asking people to spend money to go see it, I just didn’t want to like f—ing prostitute myself. And so I never was able to. But here’s what I am doing, to expand on that.

"With Lionsgate, I’m going to do Warrior as a TV series. It’s not the movie, so there’s no Conlan family, there’s none of the brothers or dad, there are no characters from the movie. But the show will be in the spirit of the movie. It will be dealing with social issues that are important to me, as there were social issues that were important to me back then that I was dramatizing. There will be characters fighting for something bigger than themselves. We will get the audience to understand and feel deep feelings for the characters before they end up fighting each other, along with the emotional complexity of that. It’s the painful realities of contemporary America I want to deal with. I’m dealing with issues, whether it’s poverty, incarceration, mental health, or addiction; it’s social issues that are important to me that I want to explore in a series, but through different characters."

Perhaps the most enticing part of the interview is that O'Connor revealed retired real-life MMA star Daniel Cormier is the first person to be cast in the spinoff: "He’s playing a guy named Bob. He’s playing Bobby Watkins, who lives in Houston and is fighting his way out of poverty for his family."