By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Nia DaCosta’s reimagining of the ’90s horror favorite now has a specific day to hook horror fans.
After a few shifts down the calendar due to the pandemic, Universal Pictures and MGM have settled on August 27, 2021 to unveil the new CANDYMAN, bucking the recent trend of studios sending their intended 2020 releases to streaming and VOD berths. The film, co-scripted and co-produced by Jordan Peele, was first intended to hit theaters June 12 of this year, then bumped to September 25 and then October 16 before coming off the schedule.
It’s good news for those, including director Nia DaCosta, who have been hoping to see the new Candyman haunt the big screen. In September, she tweeted, “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.”
The film stars AQUAMAN and WATCHMEN’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (who discusses the movie with us here); the synopsis: “For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green neighborhood were terrorized by a word-of-mouth ghost story about a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, easily summoned by those daring to repeat his name five times into a mirror. In present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy [Abdul-Mateen II] and his partner, gallery director Brianna Cartwright [Teyonah Parris], move into a luxury loft condo in Cabrini, now gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile millennials. With Anthony’s painting career on the brink of stalling, a chance encounter with a Cabrini-Green old-timer [Colman Domingo] exposes Anthony to the tragically horrific nature of the true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh grist for paintings, unknowingly opening a door to a complex past that unravels his own sanity and unleashes a terrifying wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.” The cast also includes Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Vanessa Estelle Williams and Rebecca Spence.
