The first movie came out in mid-October 2020 in France, the day the French government announced the curfew due to the second wave of COVID-19. Despite the reduced number of showings and seats, and mask wearing policies, it ended up selling 1.3 million tickets, which comforted director Tarek Boudali to pursue the action-comedy angle. He then quickly pitched the sequel to his producers, who greenlit it.
The helicopter scene was tricky to shoot, as only a military helicopter was allowed to fly in that area if Abu Dhabi. Once the local government agreed to lent the crew a Black Hawk, they shot the scene, however Tarek Boudali's shirt buttons kept opening, which means he was bare-chested for the whole scene, and thus his harness was visible, even though he tried his best to keep his shirt closed... He rechecked the footage afterwards but only 15 seconds were usable, so they had to reshoot the whole thing. Of course, by then, the helicopter had a rotor issue, so they had to find another helicopter and redo the scene with sewn buttons this time.
For the Conrad tower climb in Abu Dhabi, only three days of shooting were allowed, which meant they didn't have time for rehearsals on location. They tested the harnesses on a building around Paris beforehand, but the day before shooting, they were told they only had one day because of official visits. They managed to shoot everything in one day, but something bothered Boudali, who realized not a single shot showed the top of the building and him below at the same time! The crew then managed to get the authorization to shoot once more a few days later, after setting up all the needed equipment the night before.
During the Mexican shoot, director Tarek Boudali fell in love with a beautiful swamp-like place and wanted to fill there, but the crew told him to forget this idea, as no crew member would go there because of spiders, snakes and ticks.