It seems inevitable that the 1992 Clive Barker adaptation CANDYMAN would get the remake treatment at some point, since it was one of the best horror films to be released in the '90s and doesn't have a thriving franchise for filmmakers to continue with a new installment (the series petered out after just two sequels; 1995's CANDYMAN: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH and 1999's CANDYMAN: DAY OF THE DEAD). If a remake is indeed moving forward now, the only surprise is that it has taken so long – especially since there were rumors that a remake was already in the works a decade ago.
Twenty years after the last sequel was released, the "CANDYMAN is getting a remake" rumblings are starting up again – and this time there's the name of a new-but-major horror filmmaker in the mix. Bloody-Disgusting's Brad Miska has heard that Jordan Peele, the Oscar-winning writer/director of GET OUT (he won the Oscar for his screenplay), is in talks to produce a remake of CANDYMAN through his company Monkeypaw Productions.
Based on Barker's story The Forbidden, the original CANDYMAN was written and directed by Bernard Rose. The synopsis:
A children's ghost story comes to terrifying life in this gut-wrenching thriller about a graduate student whose research into modern folklore summons the spirit of the dead.
Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) laughs when she interviews college freshmen about their superstitions. But when she hears about Candyman, a slave spirit with a hook hand who is said to haunt Chicago's notorious Cabrini-Green housing project, she thinks she has a new twist for this thesis. Braving the gang-ridden territory to visit the site of a brutal murder, Helen arrogantly assumes Candyman can't really exist… until he appears, igniting a string of terrifying, tragic slayings. But the police don't believe in monsters, and they charge Helen with the grisly crimes. Only one person can set her free: CANDYMAN.
It would be interesting to see if a remake would retain the Chicago setting of the original or if it would move the action to England, where Barker's story was set.
If anyone is going to remake CANDYMAN, Peele is one of the filmmakers I would trust most with the property… The main problem is, it would be very strange to see the title character be brought to life by anyone other than the original trilogy's star Tony Todd.