As we know, Nia DaCosta’s upcoming revival of the “Candyman” film franchise serves as both a fourth installment and a direct sequel to the 1990s original feature.
The film takes viewers back to the world of Chicago’s Cabrini Green neighborhood, now gentrified. A visual artist named Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) arrives seeking new inspiration for his stalling career and learns the legend. The stories kick off a change within him that seem to be turning him into the new Candyman.
DaCosta recently appeared as part of the Virtual Fireside Chat at Nightstream Fest and says (via Slashfilm) that her film will differ from the original in terms of the process by which Candyman is revealed:
“In the original, he’s already a fully formed…I guess monster, we’ll say, because that’s definitely how he’s positioned in the original film, as a monster. And so, it’s really like a reveal of like, ‘Here’s my chest. I’m fully formed, I’m fully grotesque’ and in this one, we really wanted it to be a slow progression, and for me, I really wanted to trigger the response of like, you know when all of us have had a rash or something, and we’re like, hmm, what’s that?
Maybe it’s a heat rash, and then maybe it doesn’t go away for a while and you’re like, hm, interesting. Should I go to the doctor? No, it’s probably fine. And then for a vast majority of people, it goes away. In this movie, of course, it doesn’t go away, it gets worse, and so I wanted to have that effect.
If someone goes home after watching this movie and looks at their own rash, or bump, or mosquito bite and is a little more freaked out, then I’ve done my job. And that’s really what I wanted to do, it’s about getting inside the head of the audience and really viscerally disturbing them and tracking it psychologically with the sense of the main character.”
Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Colman Domingo, Vanessa A. Williams, Rebecca Spence, Cassie Kramer, and Tony Todd co-star in the film which Jordan Peele is producing. It is currently targeting a theatrical release sometime in 2021.
