An ever increasing issue in the age of social media ubiquity has been a rise in the sense of fan entitlement and its inevitable consequence – toxic fandom. Surprisingly one film that wasn’t expected to have anything to do with the issue will apparently tackle it in an interesting way.

That film is the upcoming Jordan Peele-produced ‘spiritual sequel’ to iconic horror classic “Candyman”. Ian Cooper, a creative director at Peele’s production company Monkeypaw, appeared at a producers panel the other day and was asked if the new film will deal with a social issue in a way their films like “Get Out” and “Us” did. He responded to Deadline:

“We talk a lot about fans and the idea of appeasing fans and when you do that and how do you do that and when do you not do that. I think my issue with fandom is that it’s really problematic. It’s probably the most problematic thing facing the genre. It typically comes with a dogma that is abrasive and that is more resistant to change and permutation than you would think. I think what we’re trying to do with Candyman is both be mischievous in how we address the relationship to the first film but also be very satisfying. What we’re doing with Candyman and how Jordan is crafting it on the page is going to be very exciting and rewarding to audiences that haven’t seen the original film as well as people who’ve seen the original film. In a broad sense of the word, this film will stand alone if you’ve never heard of a film called Candyman and will dovetail in a pretty complicated and interesting way to the original. In short, I think this will really fit in with what we’re doing with Us and did with Get Out in a way that will be circuitous.”

Cooper adds that the new “Candyman” has gone through various iterations whilst in development, including some “so high concept they’re basically a Gus Van Sant film”. Cooper would also not elaborate on original series star Tony Todd’s potential involvement saying: “Tony Todd is just no comment, full stop.”

“Candyman” is set for a June 12th 2020 release.