Candyman was originally scheduled to come out on June 12, 2020, but due to the pandemic, it was pushed back to September 25… then October 16… before being delayed a third time (at least it wasn’t five times) to August 27, 2021. It won’t be delayed again, unless the world is swarmed by a plague of bees. I’m not discounting anything after the past 16 months. Anyway, Nia DiCosta’s Candyman is a sort-of sequel, sort-of reboot to the 1992 horror classic of the same name, produced by Jordan Peele. It looks great.
The Yahya Abdul-Mateen II-starring film is set in the Cabrini Green neighborhood of Chicago were residents are “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.”
Here’s more:
In present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy and his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright, 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 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 wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.
Candyman also stars Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, and Colman Domingo, as well as Tony Todd and Vanessa Estelle Williams from the original movie.