Candyman reboot featurette asks, ‘What is Candyman?’

Director Nia DaCosta’s upcoming Candyman reboot / “spiritual sequel” (watch the original film HERE) is set to reach theatres this Friday, August 27th – and I’ll be glad once it’s released, because they’re marketing the hell out of this thing. The latest bit of marketing is the short featurette embedded above, in which DaCosta, producer Jordan Peele, and others respond to the question, “What is Candyman?”

Written by DaCosta, Peele, and Peele’s fellow producer Win Rosenfeld, the film has the following synopsis:

For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini Green neighborhood were 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. 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 terrifyingly viral wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.

The film stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, and original Candyman cast member Vanessa Williams, reprising the role of Anne-Marie McCoy. The Anthony McCoy mentioned in the synopsis is believed to be Anne-Marie’s son, the baby from the first film. Tony Todd is also in the film, but it’s not known in what capacity. We know for sure that Todd’s version of Candyman is referenced, but so is a Candyman who is named Sherman Fields and played by Michael Hargrove.

Ian Cooper produced Candyman with Peele and Rosenfeld.