Human Traffic director Justin Kerrigan: “I will never make a sequel”

Justin Kerrigan, the writer and director of Human Traffic, has confirmed that he will never make the long-anticipated sequel to the iconic British club culture film.

In an email sent to DJ Mag, Kerrigan said: “I wish to clarify that I am NOT making a sequel — and will never make a sequel”. This statement confirmed something the filmmaker had said in a previous interview with Empire around the film’s 25th anniversary, in which he said that, despite an initial push to get the sequel made, “I wouldn’t do Human Traffic 2 now”.

Kerrigan’s efforts to make a follow-up to the 1999 flick reportedly date back to 2014. According to him, this was a protracted process involving over five years of legal negotiations over the rights to Human Traffic and its sequel with the original film’s producers. In a comment shared with DJ Mag, one of those producers, Allan Niblo, responded to this claim: “The rights to Human Traffic 2 were granted to Justin and his producers in 2014. There was nothing contentious, he was paid to write the script and do research in Ibiza. The script was written and went out to financiers, but it was unsuccessful in securing finance… Justin asked me to produce Human Traffic 2 for him in 2014. I declined.”

In 2019, Kerrigan revealed publicly that he planned to get the sequel off the ground with some of the original cast, including Danny Dyer, reprising their roles; a script was reportedly written and “ready to go”. According to Empire’s interview, the optioned rights “expired” post-pandemic while Kerrigan was still in the process of securing funding for the project. In his correspondence with DJ Mag, Niblo claimed that “on March 5th 2020, we extended the rights for another 18 months and during this period Justin and his producers went out to financiers but were unsuccessful at securing a production budget.” 

Kerrigan has long claimed that he, and other members of Human Traffic’s original cast and crew, have received little or no payment for their work on the original film. According to Kerrigan, the original contractual agreement made between Niblo’s production company, Fruit Salad Films, and Human Traffic’s cast and crew was that they would be paid deferred wages as soon as the film went into profit. “That was the promise I made to them,” said Kerrigan.

Considering the film’s lasting impact and beloved cult status, Kerrigan does not believe that Human Traffic never went into profit, stating that it is ‘audacious’ to “continue to claim that the £340k budget film has not gone into profit”.

Niblo, who had been one of Kerrigan’s tutors at university, and “like a father figure” to him, responded to Kerrigan’s claim in his comment shared with DJ Mag. “The budget of the film was £345k for the shoot only. The financier and producer Irish Screen took over all rights in the film and invested a further £705k which included all the substantial music costs, additional editing, and completing post production to a very high standard at Pinewood and Twickenham studios.

“Due to the substantial marketing, distribution and music costs, and the fact that there was substantial losses on the film in most international markets including the USA, Germany, Italy, Japan, France and Spain, no profits were ever generated from a UK or international market,” he said.

In a separate email, Niblo said that “all key cast and crew were paid on the production and there was additional sums to be paid from profits”.

Kerrigan added that, in order to get the rights to the sequel optioned, he had to “sign away any possibility of ever getting paid for my work on Human Traffic”. “I’ve had to let go of all that to find peace in my life,” he said. “But what I can’t let go of is that my crew and cast have still not even been paid their basic wages for the shoot.

“Some of them went on to have good careers, but some of them never continued in the film industry after how they were treated by the producer,” he added. “Some, sadly, have passed away — unpaid.”

It is because of this that Kerrigan has refused to participate in any Human Traffic Live events “out of respect to my unpaid cast and crew”, despite allegedly being offered “thousands” of pounds to do so. First announced in 2019, Human Traffic Live was meant to take place in now-shuttered London club Printworks in 2020, though was ultimately cancelled due to the pandemic. At Glastonbury this year, two separate Human Traffic Live events took place in association with Save Our Scene and Blended Artists to mark the film’s 25th anniversary. 

“I find about these things at the same time as the public,” Kerrigan said, adding that this is also the case with the 4K restored version of Human Traffic released on Apple TV. 

Emphasising that he will not be involved in any kind of sequel of the film, Kerrigan said: “Any information you may hear to the contrary from the Human Traffic Live publicity campaign is complete misinformation. This misinformation is confusing my original crew, cast and followers of the film.”

Update 12th July 2024, 5 45 PM: This story has been updated to included additional quotes and context from Allan Niblo