Casting is really heating up for producer Jordan Peele’s upcoming “spiritual sequel” to Bernard Rose’s original 1992 adaptation of Clive Barker’sCandyman. Last week we learned thatAquamanvillain Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is in talks for the starring role, and today we have word that the studio and the filmmakers are courtingIf Beale Street Could Talkactress Teyonah Parris for a supporting role.
Teyonah Parrisis perhaps best known for her recent role inIf Beale Street Could Talk, but the actress has snagged roles in films such asDear White Peopleand Spike Lee’sChi-Raq. Not to mention roles in TV shows such asMad Men, where she played Don Draper’s secretary Dawn Chambers, Starz sitcomSurvivor’s Remorse, and Fox’s mega-hit seriesEmpire.
Parris potentially joing the cast is all well and good, but one of the biggest bits of new info in this story is that it looks likeYahya Abdul-Mateen II is not in talks to play Candyman himself. Instead, he is in negotiations for a role as “an artist who becomes obsessed with the bloody legend.” Huh. Wonder how his rumored involvement with the actual title role came about? Anyhow, if Parris does indeed sign on for a role in this new take, she is set to play Abdul-Mateen’s art dealer girlfriend.
Now all I can wonder is whether or not the rumors ofGet OutandDeath NotestarLakeith Stanfield playing the titular Candyman are true… if so count me a happy genre fan as Stanfield is one of my favorite up-and-coming actors out there. I guess we’ll see about all of this sooner rather than later as Jordan Peele’s reboot of Clive Barker’sCandymanis heading into a late spring / early summer shoot with Universal distributing the film domestically.Candymanis all set to bring sweets to the sweet in June 2020.
The original 1992 movie followed this synopsis.
A children’s ghost story comes to terrifying life in this gut-wrenching thriller about a graduate student whose research into modern folklore summons the spirit of the dead. Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) laughs when she interviews college freshmen about their superstitions. But when she hears about Candyman, a slave spirit with a hook hand who is said to haunt Chicago’s notorious Cabrini-Green housing project, she thinks she has a new twist for this thesis. Braving the gang-ridden territory to visit the site of a brutal murder, Helen arrogantly assumes Candyman can’t really exist… until he appears, igniting a string of terrifying, tragic slayings. But the police don’t believe in monsters, and they charge Helen with the grisly crimes. Only one person can set her free: Candyman.
A month or so ago, Peele’s upcoming reboot snagged a director in the form ofLittle Woodswriter-director Nia DaCosta. This “spiritual sequel” to Bernard Rose’s original 1992 adaptation of Clive Barker’s short storyThe Forbiddenwill return to the neighborhood where the legend began: The now-gentrified section of Chicago where the Cabrini-Green housing projects once stood. DaCosta’s new take on Barker’s classic story is all set to hook you in the back of the face come June 06, 2025. This story comes to us viaThe Hollywood Reporter.
