When renowned contemporary filmmaker Jordan Peele announced he was working on a sequel to the 1992 horror slasher Candyman, it was simply assumed he would – like he did with his previous hits Get Out and Us – serve as both writer and director. So, when it was announced that co-writer Nia DaCosta would ascend the director’s chair, the decision was met with general surprise, a fair amount of confusion, and even a little bit of outrage.
Alas, Peele recently elaborated on the change in a recent interview with Empire, saying:
“I was working on Us when this would have happened,” Peele explained. “But quite honestly, Nia is better to shoot this than I am. I’m way too obsessed with the original tales in my head. I probably wouldn’t be any good. But Nia has a steady manner about her which you don’t see a lot in the horror space. She’s refined, elegant, every shot is beautiful. It’s a beautiful, beautiful movie. I’m so glad I didn’t mess it up.”
While the plot of the film is still murky, we do know the producers intend for it to be a spiritual successor to the 90s original. Distributor Universal published a short synopsis of the picture on its website as well, teasing the story of an unsuspecting young couple’s encounter with an urban legend. Like the 1992 film, Peele’s version will take place in Chicago’s Cabrini Green neighborhood, which has since been “gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile millennials.”
The decision to change directors is somewhat unbecoming of Peele, who wrote and directed both of his last pictures, 2017’s Get Out and 2019’s Us. However, given those were original scripts and Candyman is a reboot of an existing franchise based on a short by Clive Barker, the decision to limit his involvement in the project starts to make a bit more sense.
Candyman, which was originally going to be released June 12th, 2020, has been postponed to September 25th of the same year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.