Ian Cooper will be producing a "spiritual sequel" to the 1992 classic CANDYMAN with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, through Peele's company Monkeypaw Productions, and he had an interesing answer when Deadline asked him if the film would address any issues like Peele's films GET OUT and US dealt with race and inequality. While appearing on a Produced By Conference panel called The New Age of Producing Horror, Cooper said the new CANDYMAN will address "toxic fandom".
We talk a lot about fans and the idea of appeasing fans and when you do that and how do you do that and when do you not do that. I think my issue with fandom is that it’s really problematic. It’s probably the most problematic thing facing the genre. It typically comes with a dogma that is abrasive and that is more resistant to change and permutation than you would think."
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Set to be directed by Nia DaCosta from a screenplay written by Peele and Rosenfeld, the new CANDYMAN will star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who is believed to be playing an artist named Anthony, and Teyonah Parris as Anthony's art dealer girlfriend. We've heard that the film's story centers on
Anthony, a socially pronounced artist in Chicago who researches the urban legend of Candyman. After investigating the killer’s last known whereabouts, strange killings begin to occur around Anthony. The protagonist will serve a role similar to that of Helen Lyle, the main character of the original movie.
Tony Todd, who played Candyman in the original film and two sequels, has indicated that he is in the cast as well, but it's not clear if he will be reprising the role of Candyman. When asked about Todd's involvement, Cooper simply said,
Tony Todd is just no comment, full stop."
The producer also wouldn't reveal how this film is connected to the original, but he did say:
I think what we’re trying to do with CANDYMAN is both be mischievous in how we address the relationship to the first film but also be very satisfying. … What we’re doing with CANDYMAN and how Jordan is crafting it on the page is going to be very exciting and rewarding to audiences that haven’t seen the original film as well as people who’ve seen the original film. In a broad sense of the word, this film will stand alone if you’ve never heard of a film called CANDYMAN and will dovetail in a pretty complicated and interesting way to the original."
The new CANDYMAN is scheduled to be released on June 12, 2020.
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