The original ‘StreetDance 3D’ hit like a hurricane.

Released just on two years ago, it beat franchise rival ‘Step Up’ to the 3D punch by a good four months, and reinvigorated the dance film genre with its straightforward style and British sensibility. It remains one of the most successful independent UK films ever made.

So how do you follow-up such a raging success? For producer James Richardson, the original film was a passion project, and something completely different to anything he’d ever attempted before. While it made sense to do another, he and his fellow filmmakers knew they’d have to top the first instalment in every conceivable way.

“It’s quite a daunting prospect trying to make a sequel, particularly as the first was so successful,” Richardson says. “But the process was really organic, and what really helped is that we sat down and asked ourselves what made ‘StreetDance’ as a film, and we all agreed that it was this fusion of dance styles.”

The first film crossed hip hop and ballet to create a riotous hybrid which bounced about the screen. So, the challenge was on to push the idea even further and find a new and exciting combination. When director Dania Pasquini sent Richardson footage of people doing salsa in a boxing ring, he knew they were onto something.

“Salsa to me was ballroom dancing and long sequined dresses and that kind of stuff,” he says. “But these guys had their tops off and the girls were looking incredibly cool, and they were doing a kind of battle between them. I thought, ‘That’s it; this is totally what we have to do!’”

Pasquini adds: “With the first ‘StreetDance’ film we talked about the whole essence of it and we felt it was very much about introducing different dance styles to a young audience. So for myself and Max [Giwa, the film’s co-director] it was really vital to create another fusion and because we had been working together for so long we knew it was going to be Latin.”

The modus operandi for ‘StreetDance 2 3D’ seems to be to make everything bigger and better. Whereas the first film flipped its way around London, acting as something of an advertisement for the UK capital, this time the filmmakers wanted to take on the European mainland.

“We thought, ‘Let’s look at the rest of Europe and some of the key places’,” Richardson says. “We decided on Paris as a romantic city and so we decided that our lead guy was going to get the best of the best around Europe … This gave us an opportunity to go to Italy, Germany, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Paris and all these places. It’s all been about picking a place and to show the rest of the world what dance is outside of the US.”

A cynic would argue that it’s also a fine way to broaden your pool of dancing talent, and they’d be right. Pasquini openly admits to cherry picking the best dancers from around Europe.

“We always knew that we wanted to showcase … a wider talent base,” she says, “so that's why we hit Europe. Because in ‘StreetDance 1’ we wanted to show the raft of talent in the UK, and then in ‘StreetDance 2’ we wanted to open it up to the whole world, and Europe especially.”

Leading this Euro ensemble are Falk Hentschel and Sofia Boutella. Hentschel began his professional life as a back-up dancer for Britney Spears and Mariah Carey before branching out into acting, appearing on cable shows ‘Arrested Development’ and ‘The Closer’ as well as taking on a major role in the 2009 Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz vehicle, ‘Knight And Day’. Boutella, meanwhile, is well known in the street dance world: she's a Nike athlete, a renowned hip hop dancer and tours regularly with Madonna. For the filmmakers, the duo were a natural choice, although no small amount of luck played a part in their casting.

“‘You would think there would be a raft of actors who can dance in LA, wouldn’t you?” Giwa says. “Well, there aren’t. But we got lucky with Falk. He came in towards the end of the last round of castings in LA … We spoke to our casting director and when he came in and read on tape we just thought there was something special about him. Fortunately as well he has a Latin [dance] background, which is something that’s very hard to find … He had the complete package.”

“Sofia is a very well known dancer within the street dance world,” Pasquini adds. “So we’d been aware of her extraordinary talents for quite some time and knew we wanted to work with her. It was just a case of getting her excited about this project. We flew to LA to meet her and we were very lucky because she’d been doing acting lessons there for a couple years, so it was perfect timing for her in terms of her career.”

For his part, Hentschel doesn’t hold back when he talks about the level of commitment required of both him and Boutella once on set.

“It is definitely the hardest work I have ever done,” Hentschel says. “Especially the first four weeks [when] it was just Sofia and I, so the focus was just zoomed in on us. If we did something wrong or something wasn’t gelling in general … the pressure was on.  Also, we couldn’t take any breaks because it was just the two of us, so we did it again and again and again. We were sort of crash test dummies and at the same time we didn’t really know what this whole ‘Latin-street fusion' was, so we tried every single lift and even though some of them didn’t end up in the movie, we did them over and over.”

Of course, a ‘StreetDance’ film wouldn’t be complete without some stunt casting to add a bit of gravitas to the project. In the first instalment it was the enigmatic Charlotte Rampling, playing a mentor to the struggling protagonists. This time, the filmmakers have once again confirmed their love of everything indie by nabbing the great Tom Conti, best known for his role in the Lewis Gilbert comedy-drama, ‘Shirley Valentine’.

“Tom was very enthusiastic about his character and wanted to make it light and humorous so we let him go with it,” Richardson explains. “There was more comedy to him and we wanted to push that … Tom is an incredibly funny guy and his timing is extraordinary, so every time the camera was on him you just knew that something funny was going to happen.”

So, ‘StreetDance 2’ is set to be bigger, badder, and more ambitious than its plucky predecessor. Now, audiences need only wait to see what proof will be in the pudding. Regardless, the filmmakers are proud of their achievement.

“We brought together a group of great individual dancers,” Giwa says. “None of them had done a film before, but they’re all individual champions in their own field so we were so privileged to have them … Hopefully this film will reach a wider audience. As well as fans of the first film they’ll be the fans of the individual dancers and an audience with a specific interest in what we’ve done with Latin styles.”

‘STREETDANCE 2 3D’ HITS CINEMAS NATIONALLY, APRIL 19.