Years ago, filmmaker Nia DaCosta dared to look into her middle school bathroom mirror and say “Candyman” five times, a ritual that part of her feared would summon the supernatural antagonist from the 1992 horror classic. Now, she really is summoning the Candyman, this time as the director behind the upcoming reimagining, due out June 12.
The first trailer, which launched Thursday, teases the updated story, which takes place in the now-gentrified area surrounding Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects. DaCosta teamed with producer Jordan Peele for the project, noting the Get Out filmmaker has a different philosophy when it comes to gore.
“I really love gore,” DaCosta told reporters Wednesday on the Universal Studios lot. “What’s fun about working with Jordan is our horror aesthetics are different. Jordan is really brilliant at not showing everything. My instinct is to do the exact opposite. … there’s a good amount of things you don’t want to see [in the movie].”
With Get Out and Us, Peele used the horror genre to tackle social issues such as racial and economic injustice. DaCosta noted social issues run throughout their version of Candyman, including how gentrification has displaced people and changed neighborhoods.
Peele noted that the original Candyman, which centered on a grad student investigating an urban legend about a hook-handed killer, was a seminal film for him.
“It was one of the few movies that explored any aspect of the black experience in the horror genre in the ’90s, when I was growing up,” said Peele, who called it an “iconic example of representation in the genre, and a movie that inspired me.”
DaCosta spoke freely with reporters during the event, only getting cautious at once question: will original Candyman star Tony Todd be in the movie?
“I don’t want to give anything away,” she said, cautiously.
MGM and Universal are the studios behind Candyman, which stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris and Colman Domingo.
