When Sicariolanded in 2015 as Taylor Sheridan's first produced screenplay, nobody involved seemed to be planning a franchise. Denis Villeneuve's border thriller was a lean $30 million drama that took $84.9 million worldwide and three Oscar nominations, and it worked partly because it felt like a closed loop, with no obvious room left for anyone to come back. Stefano Sollima's 2018 follow-up, Day of the Soldado, found room anyway, pulling the two operatives at the margins of the first film into the middle of a bigger, blunter story and turning a $35 million budget into roughly $75 million.