Night Has Fallen will be the fourth entry in the series and it should take the next logical step and make Gerard Butler’s Mike Banning the President.

Night Has Fallen should take the next logical step in the franchise and make Gerard Butler’s Mike Banning the actual President of the United States. Every once in a while in Hollywood, two movies with virtually identical concepts will go head to head in the same year.

For example, 1997 saw the arrival of Volcano and Dante’s Peak, with both being disaster movies where long-dormant volcanos suddenly erupt and wreak havoc. One of the most recent examples of this thread was in 2013 when Roland Emmerich’s White House Down and Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen battled it out at the box office.

Both were Die Hard-inspired action thrillers that saw terrorists take over the White House, with only one man being capable of stopping them. Olympus Has Fallen beat White House Down to the screen by a few months and ultimately proved to be the winner.

Despite its R rating and mixed reviews, it turned a tidy profit, while White House Down was a financial disappointment. Olympus Has Fallen also gave lead Gerard Butler a surprise franchise, with both the movie and character aping ’80s action movies.

Butler and co-stars Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman and Angela Bassett all returned for 2016’s London Has Fallen, where Butler’s Secret Service Agent Mike Banning had to save Eckhart’s President Asher during an attack on London.

The most recent outing was 2019’s Angel Has Fallen, where Banning is framed for an assassination attempt on Freeman’s President Trumbull and must clear his name and uncover a conspiracy.

The Has Fallen movies have all been successful, and a fourth entry dubbed Night Has Fallen is in development with Butler returning; a spin-off TV series is also in the works. Butler’s Banning has saved two different Presidents now, but if Night Has Fallen is to evolve the series further, it should make Banning himself the next President.

Despite the Has Fallen movie series drawing on some real-world events for inspiration, there’s a cartoonish action movie sensibility to them. While Banning has shown little to no interest in directly engaging with politics in the previous movies, given his heroic actions and general patriotism, it’s not a huge stretch in terms of movie logic to believe he could be elected to the office.

The upcoming Night Has Fallen – which has yet to fully reveal its storyline – could cut out the middle man and feature Banning having to save himself and, by extension, the nation, which would give the sequel a different dynamic.

Outside of Harrison Ford in Air Force One, there’s also a lack of action hero Presidents onscreen, and a trailer for Night Has Fallen that features Banning being both an inspiring leader while also getting into action hijinks practically sells itself.

The Has Fallen movies are also more entertaining when they inject a little knowing humor, and while getting bigger and crazier isn’t always the best route for a franchise, President Mike Banning feels like a natural fit.