Disney’s second attempt at turning a particular theme park ride into a hit film with this Summer’s “Haunted Mansion” instead ended up being one of the biggest flops of the season.
Though reviews were better this time around for director Justin Simien’s film than they were for the Eddie Murphy-led movie two decades ago, the movie has effectively ended its run with $115.8 million in box-office from a budget said to be a little over $150 million.
With the film having recently released on digital platforms and coming to disc this week, Simien has been doing a few interviews and tells Screen Rant that there’s no talk of a follow-up at this point:
“No, no talks. I have no idea what they want to do with the future of the franchise, if there is a franchise. I have no clue, but I certainly was really inspired by the experience.
And I’ve been spending a lot of time in my strike sort of tending to my own garden with regard to writing, and I think you’ll see the influence of this experience in the next things I do, no matter if it’s another Haunted Mansion movie, or if it’s something original that I write. We’ll see what the future holds.”
The film notably was one of the first to get flattened by the steamroller that was the Barbenheimer phenomenon and speaking with The Wrap, Simien says he could see that coming:
“I think the release date was really tough – I saw ‘Barbie’ coming from miles away. I was disappointed by some aspects of our release, but I was not really surprised.
There was a lot of stuff going on with the strike…a lot of stuff that had nothing to do with the movie that I think really got in the way, and that was frustrating to see because I came up in publicity. If you had asked me and sat down with me…I would have seen some of these things coming. I’ll put it that way.”
Simien eagerly talked up a follow-up to the film prior to release which sounds like an impossibility right now short of an unexpected massive viewership surge on the Disney+ service.
