By the standards of the pandemic era, Cruella has to be viewed as a major success story, even if it didn’t fly as high at the box office as Disney would have hoped. That being said, $226 million globally is hardly a disaster given the current circumstances that continue to plague the industry, and you can guarantee that it earned more than a pretty penny through Premier Access sales as well.
Sequel talk started up right after the 101 Dalmatians prequel’s opening weekend, but it was only very recently that star and executive producer Emma Stone closed a deal to return as the future puppy-skinner. Reports have indicated that the fallout from Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow lawsuit may have secured the Academy Award winner a much more lucrative contract, but it turns out that director Craig Gillespie hasn’t yet boarded Cruella 2.
With Stone and writer Tony McNamara both on board for the second installment, you’d have to imagine it’s only a matter of time before Gillespie signs on the dotted line, unless of course there’s some behind the scenes disagreements or discussions going on that we haven’t been made privy to. Outside of the leading lady, director and writer, the most important cog in the Cruella machine is unquestionably costume designer Jenny Beavan, with virtually all of her pieces grabbing headlines in their own right.
Having directed offbeat rom-com Lars and the Real Girl, biopic I, Tonya and upcoming miniseries Pam & Tommy, Gillespie has proven himself more than capable of flitting between multiple genres, and the infectious sense of fun he brought to Cruella‘s visual aesthetic surely means that it’s only a matter of time before he joins the rest of the major players in returning.