Judge the franchise potential of January horror movies at your own peril. The track record on...well, any genre film that does big business during these early weeks is spotty at best. This year has seen a handful of films take advantage of weak competition to do quite well, and one of those was the Jessica Chastain-led horror, Mama. Directed by newcomer Andrés Muschietti and produced by Guillermo Del Toro, the film cost practically nothing and is closing in on $100M worldwide. That means sequels, and Universal is considering just that very thing.
International Universal's president David Kosse definitely sees the potential in a franchise, telling Screen Daily...
Kosse: "We think there’s potential for a Mama franchise. We’d like to do another one. But those conversations are in the early stages."
Those early conversations maybe going on without Muschietti, who thinks the Mama premise has run its course. Talking to ScreenCrush, he sounds ready to move on to other projects....
Muschietti: "We sort of wore out the subject matter…I never thought this could continue. Sequels are always tricky. I know how studios think but I don’t see ‘Mama’ as something you can exploit because you’re screwing with the original. I’m really hoping to jump into some other movies right now."
Not that they'd need him or Del Toro for another film to take place. Mama is a known commodity now, and they must just decide to keep hiring lesser-known directors. I never saw the film, so maybe you can tell me if it's worthy of a sequel?
