Nia DaCosta’s Candyman seemingly wants to shake the table a little bit when it comes to the problematic behavior of fans.
Jordan Peele who produces the film. Peele’s Monkeypaw Creative Director, Ian Cooper, spoke at the Produced By Conference for The New Age of Producing Horror panel.
On how Candyman could fit in with what’s been done with Get Out and Us, Cooper told Deadline, “We talk a lot about fans and the idea of appeasing fans and when you do that and how do you do that and when do you not do that. I think my issue with fandom is that it’s really problematic. It’s probably the most problematic thing facing the genre. It typically comes with a dogma that is abrasive and that is more resistant to change and permutation than you would think. I think what we’re trying to do with Candyman is both be mischievous in how we address the relationship to the first film but also be very satisfying.”
He continued, “What we’re doing with Candyman and how Jordan is crafting it on the page is going to be very exciting and rewarding to audiences that haven’t seen the original film as well as people who’ve seen the original film. In a broad sense of the word, this film will stand alone if you’ve never heard of a film called Candyman and will dovetail in a pretty complicated and interesting way to the original. In short, I think this will really fit in with what we’re doing with Us and did with Get Out in a way that will be circuitous.”
The Nia DaCosta-directed MGM film will be released in theaters on June 12, 2020. It will be set in “the now-gentrified section of Chicago where the Cabrini-Green housing projects once stood.” The film has been confirmed to star Yahya Abdul Mateen II and Teyonah Parris.
The original 1992 Bernard Rose-directed film was based on a short story by Clive Barker and starred Tony Todd as the Candyman, the son of a slave who became an artist and inventor who was mutilated and killed by his lover’s father using bees. The urban legend, as the film states, is that if you say his name five times in a mirror, he’ll appear and kill the person with the hook that replaces his severed hand.
The film became a success after its release, grossing $25 million with approval from many critics. It has since lived on as a cult horror classic.
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