Nia DaCosta has made history as the first Black female director to debut a movie at No. 1 at the domestic box office with “Candyman.”
“Candyman” opened this weekend with taking an impressive $20.4 million.
The record was previously owned by Ava DuVernay and her Disney movie “A Wrinkle In Time,” which debuted in the No. 2 spot in March 2018 with $33.1 million.
The release of DaCosta’s greatly anticipated horror flick was delayed last year due to the pandemic. DaCosta stood by her decision to push the release of the flick back.
“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.
Universal and MGM announced the movie’s release date had been moved from Oct. 16 to some time in 2021.
In an interview a month later, she detailed how she wants viewers to feel when watching her remake of the classic.
“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.”
So far, the feedback on the movie has been good.
