Jordan Peele has reached out to Get Out actor Lakeith Stanfield to star as the protagonist in the upcoming Candyman reboot/sequel. First reported by SuperBrosMovies, and later corroborated by Collider, the actor will not play the murderous hook-handed baddie, but is instead in talks to play a character named Anthony, “a young man in Chicago who is researching the urban legend known simply as Candyman.”
Stanfield had a bit (though important) role in Peele’s Get Out, but has also turned heads with his performances in FX’s Atlanta and the recent Sorry to Bother You. He will next be seen in Netflix’s Someone Great, and Rian Johnson’s Knives Out.
Rising filmmaker Nia DaCosta (Little Woods) will direct Candyman from a screenplay by Peele and Rosenfeld. The film, a “spiritual sequel” to the original, returns to the neighborhood where the legend began: the now-gentrified section of Chicago where the Cabrini-Green housing projects once stood.
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MGM will produce and finance Candyman with Universal handling domestic theatrical distribution. Adam Rosenberg, MGM’s Co-President of Production and Tabitha Shick, MGM’s Vice President of Production will oversee the project on behalf of the studio and Ian Cooper will produce for Monkeypaw.
Production is expected to begin Spring 2019. Universal Pictures will release Candyman theatrically in the U.S. on June 12, 2020.
(Photo credit: Getty Images)
