'Candyman' director Nia DaCosta shares chilling animated origin story teaser
Candyman director Nia DaCosta has unveiled a powerful animated teaser for the movie, which tells the origin story of the titular killer, while also spotlighting violence against black people.
The animation tells the story of an artist who paints images of black victims, with vignettes telling various stories of racially motivated violence, including some inspired by true events.
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A final vignette tells the origin tale of the Candyman, as featured in the original 1992 movie, as a wealthy black painter is subject to the brutality of a lynch mob when he falls in love with a white woman after painting her portrait.
DaCosta wrote on Twitter that her film is about “unwilling martyrs” and exists “at the intersection of white violence and black pain”.
The stunning puppetry of the animation was created by performance company Manual Cinema.
A visual artist sits at the centre of the new Candyman, with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II starring as Anthony McCoy, who moves into the new gentrified housing projects of Cabrini Green and discovers the horrible truth about the urban myth of the Candyman.
He uses this story and others like it as the inspiration for his paintings, which leads his own sanity to begin to fracture.
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The reboot has Get Out and Us filmmaker Jordan Peele as a producer and co-writer, with Tony Todd returning in some form to reprise his role as the titular killer.
The original Candyman, loosely adapted from a short story by horror writer Clive Barker, was a solid hit at the box office and spawned two sequels.
In 2018, when the new project was announced, it was described as a “spiritual sequel” to the 1992 movie.
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Peele told EW: “The original was a landmark film for black representation in the horror genre.
“Alongside Night of the Living Dead, Candyman was a major inspiration for me as a filmmaker — and to have a bold new talent like Nia at the helm of this project is truly exciting.”
Candyman is due to be released in cinemas on 25 September.