She’s a lot like you, the dangerous type. Image : Sony

For the past few years, there have been talks of a remake/sequel of the 1996 teen witch classic, The Craft. Now, it looks like the spell has been cast, with Blumhouse coming onboard to start the incantation—along with what looks to be the studio’s first female director for a blockbuster horror film.




According to Production Weekly, and confirmed by Deadline, a new The Craft movie is set to enter production this July. This latest The Craft film is being helmed by actress-turned-director Zoe Lister-Jones . It’s Lister-Jones’ first major studio film as a writer and director, having previously worked on the indie film Band Aid. It appears to be the first major studio Blumhouse horror movie to have a woman at the helm, following Jason Blum’s ridiculous comments about Hollywood having a lack of female horror directors.

The project is being worked on by Blumhouse, with Blum, Doug Wick, and Lucy Fisher serving as producers. Here’s the official description:

When starting at a new school, Hannah befriends Tabby, Lourdes, and Frankie, and quickly becomes the fourth member of their Clique. Hannah soon learns that she somehow brings great power to the quartet.


This latest The Craft film has been in the works since 2015 (and rumored even before then)—with the original script penned by would-be director Leigh Janiak and Phil Graziadei, before Daniel Casey was brought onboard for the rewrite a couple of years later. It was originally meant to be a rebooted sequel to the original, akin to Mary Poppins Returns, the new Halloween, or Jordan Peele’s upcoming Candyman. At least that’s what producer Wick indicated back in 2016.

“I wouldn’t say that we wouldn’t so much call it a remake as ‘20 years later’”, Wick told Hitfix in 2016. “There will be callbacks to the original movie, so you will see there is a connection between what happening in the days of The Craft, and how these young women come across this magic many years later.”

The description in Production Weekly for this newest version does call it a “remake” of the classic 1996 film that starred Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Rachel True, and Neve Campbell, but it’s hard to say whether it’s a remake, a sequel, or a “requel” at this point. Though, since the lead characters all have different names, it seems most likely that, at the very least, this new version isn’t a complete remake of the original. Rather, a disconnected continuation. Kind of like the new Charmed series, a new story set in a familiar franchise.

We reached out to Blumhouse for more info on The Craft and will update should we hear back. Production is set to start in July, and there’s no release date as of yet.


[h/t Jezebel]

Update: An earlier version of this story said that Casey was the film’s co-writer, but io9 has learned that director Lister-Jones is the sole writer on the project. Also added confirmation from Deadline.


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