Candyman director Nia DaCosta’s hotly-anticipated project may not be dropping until next year, but during the recent Nightstream Film Festival, she spoke about the direction she wanted her remake to take — and what she wants us to feel after laying eyes on the flick for the first time.
“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,” DaCosta said, according to Slash Film.
The movie is a sequel to Bernard Rose’s Candyman.
“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.”
The movie has been pushed back from an October 2020 release date to next year due to the pandemic.
“We made Candyman to be seen in theaters. Not just for the spectacle but because the film is about community and stories–how they shape each other, how they shape us. It’s about the collective experience of trauma and joy, suffering and triumph, and the stories we tell around it,” she tweeted last month.
The coronavirus has had a notable impact on the film industry, with many studios opting to release via streaming platforms or postponing until next year.
