As we've opined previously, 'The Raid' and 'The Raid 2' are among the finest action movies ever made, bar none.

Gareth Evans' deep love and respect for martial arts plays out in every scene, and you can just tell that he knows how to blend and edit action together in a way that's seamless and inventive. While he's out on the promotional trailer for 'Gangs of London', the new Sky original series with our own Colm Meaney, he's had to field a few questions on the movie that might have been - 'The Raid 3'.

On a recent episode of the Empire Film Podcast, Evans expounded on why he couldn't see himself making another 'Raid' movie with Rama - that's Iko Uwais' character - as the lead.

"I couldn’t fathom of another fucking reason why (Rama) would put his life at risk and separate himself from his fucking wife and kid again. I was like, it can’t be about Rama. It just can’t, because if he does something to pull himself away from his poor fucking wife and kid again," Evans went on.

Without going too much into detail - because you really should listen to the episode - Evans had worked out a fairly detailed plot for the third movie, which would have seen the Japanese yakuza fighting a guerilla war in the jungles of West Java in a way that Evans likened to 'Predator', followed by a final sequence set in Tokyo against the rest of the yakuza.

All in all, it sounds incredible. So, the question then is why not make that happen?

"Before I knew it," Evans explains, "I was five years down the line, I’d made 'Apostle', we were starting to get production going on 'Gangs of London'. I couldn’t see myself going back out to make 'The Raid 3'. My interests had moved on to other projects. You work with other people, you meet other people and want to work with them again, you want to try different things, you find a story that suddenly captures your attention and that’s the thing you want to do next. Things get offered to you that are hard to pass up on."

To be fair, that's as good a reason as any not to do. it. Since the huge success of 'The Raid' and 'The Raid 2', it was always going to be a case that making 'The Raid 3' a reality was becoming less and less likely.

Still, he's clearly given it some thought and who knows, maybe Netflix or the like might get behind it in the future?