EXCLUSIVE: After a two year journey to gain back the rights to The Way, Emilio Estevez has arranged with Fathom Events to re-release the film nationwide on May 16 on about 800 screens or more. The effort has led to not only a chance to dust off a 12-year old film, but also to start progress on a sequel.

The film was scripted and directed by Estevez, partly inspired by the Jack Hitt book Off The Road: A Modern Day Walk Down the Pilgrim’s Route Into Spain. The film starred Estevez’s dad, Martin Sheen, and the director played the small role of a man who died while making the pilgrimage called El Camino de Santiago, also known as The Way of Saint James. This is where the Apostle James was buried. His dad takes over the effort, his son’s ashes in tow, and is about the people he meets along the way and how the journey changes him. Deborah Kara Unger, James Nesbitt, and Yorick van Wageningen also starred.

“This has always been a very special movie to me,” Estevez said while aboard a train with Sheen and the travel writer Rick Steves, to film a discussion about the meaning of the movie. “My father has done films like Badlands, Apocalypse Now and The West Wing, and this is right up there with those in terms of his performance,” Estevez told Deadline. “I’ve always been so proud of his work. This has grown from a passion project into something else. We’ve been talking about doing a follow up, a sequel of sorts. Martin says he’s up for it and I’ve cracked the code for what it would be. I will go to Spain to do promotion for this, but also testing the waters for what a sequel might look like.

“This is a second bite at the apple, which is rare for a movie,” Estevez said. “It’s a movie that is now more of its time than when we made it. Going through and coming out of Covid, people want to get out and travel again, see the world and be less isolated.”