John Krasinski on how A Quiet Place 2 won’t be a typical sequel

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Despite really enjoying the movie, I'm not sure if I actually want a sequel to A QUIET PLACE, but given that the film made quite the chunk of change comparable to its budget, we'll be getting a sequel whether we want it or not. Development on a follow-up began fairly quickly, but director/co-writer/star John Krasinski initially didn't want anything to do with it. "Listen, I’m a realist. I’ve always loved the idea of looking at everything from everybody else’s perspective, and I totally get it, when you’re a studio and you have a hit like that, you want another one," Krasinski recently said while speaking on The Big Picture podcast. "So I said, ‘Go with God and get another director and another screenwriter.’ [A sequel] wasn’t our intention and this wasn’t the studio’s intention, but I understand why." Despite that, Paramount still approached Krasinski to pick his brain about possible ideas for the sequel, which lead to them "jedi mind tricking" him into writing the script himself. I hate when that happens.

So I had this little idea that I thought of and my producer, again, was very smart and said, ‘Will you just write it down so I can give it to these filmmakers who are coming in to pitch?’ and I said, ‘Yeah’. And then after like three weeks he was like, ‘Why don’t you just write this and then we’ll get another filmmaker?’ and of course Jedi mind tricked me into signing on to the sequel.

We still don't know exactly what path John Krasinski will be taking with the next film, but it sounds like he's got something a little different from the typical sequel cooked up. "Why I had this little idea that’s now gotten bigger is most sequels are about a villain returning or a hero returning, and you have to build this entire world around just the idea that I have a hero or a villain. That’s a lot, and I think that’s where a lot of sequels go wrong because as much as you love that hero or villain, the entire thing is fabricated just to make that person work," Krasinski said. "[With A QUIET PLACE 2], we have the world. So it’s actually the world that’s built, it’s the idea that the rest of the world is going through this exact same experience. Are there other people that have to survive like this? It’s that idea of living through the set of circumstances, not again in the same way obviously, but exploring it more. You only got to do it intimately for a small amount of time, so what happens next?" Krasinski continued:

That’s why I got really excited, because for me certainly the most fun I’ve ever had in my career as a writer was writing this, because I got to play in the most exciting world. It was actually Emily, of course, who articulated it better than me. She said the same thing, it was like, ‘No way, don’t do a second one,’ and then I pitched her my idea and she was like, ‘So you’re definitely doing that.’ She said, ‘But it’s not a sequel. It’s the second book in a series,’ she said, ‘It sounds [like] semantics but it’s true, it really is—you’re not doing anything that’s like, alright I’m gonna take all the things you love and just kinda repeat them but in a different way.’ It’s not A QUIETER PLACE, it’s sort of an exploration of getting to live in the circumstances, and that’s really fun.

The sequel to A QUIET PLACE is already slated to hit theaters on May 15, 2020.