Though Paramount and Platinum Dunes had originally pegged Friday the 13th for release in October of 2017, that sought-after corridor ultimately belonged to another horror title: Happy Death Day.
Blumhouse and Christopher Landon’s sleeper hit took the best elements from films like Groundhog Day and Scream and wrapped them all up in a very entertaining package – even if the final product proved to be a bit too familiar for some. And in typical Blumhouse fashion, Happy Death Day exceeded all expectations at the box office as well, raking in over $100 million on a production budget of just $4.8 million. Not bad, right?
That’s an impressive turnaround in and of itself, and to no surprise, it means that we’re now getting a sequel. Yes, Happy Death Day 2 will head in front of cameras this month, with shooting taking place in New Orleans and today, Deadline is bringing us some casting news.
As expected, Jessica Rothe will be back as Tree, and joining her are Life of Pi actor Suraj Sharma in the role of Samar Ghosh, “a science enthusiast and geek who enjoys coding in his spare time,” and The Middle‘s Sarah Yarkin, who’s set to play Dre Morgan, “a science geek and tom-boy with a sleepy feline gaze who is Samar’s partner-in-crime.”
Unfortunately, we don’t have much more to go on other than that, but at least things are starting to heat up now and with any luck, we’ll get some firm plot details in the not too distant future. Speaking of which, Rothe recently outlined a tentative pitch for Happy Death Day 2, one that may well spawn a horror sequel inspired by Back to the Future. Where do we sign up?
“Chris [Landon] has done this incredible thing where the sequel, the way he described it to me, elevates the movie from being a horror movie – and I wouldn’t even say it’s just a horror movie because it’s a horror, comedy, rom-com drama – into a Back to the Future type of genre film where the sequel joins us right from where we left off, it explains a lot of things in the first one that didn’t get explained, and it elevates everything.”
Happy Death Day is currently available on Blu-ray and DVD (buy it here), meaning you can now take home one of 2017’s undisputed sleeper hits. As for its sequel, as soon as we learn more, we’ll be sure to let you know.