Thanks to news coming out of WonderCon 2024, fans finally have an official release window for The Strangers: Chapter 2, the middle entry in a new horror trilogy based on the original 2008 film.
While audiences know Chapter 1 is releasing on May 17, there has not been concrete word on when exactly the following two entries will drop.
All that was shared is how the studio intends on releasing every installment fairly close to one another so the world will not be waiting years for each movie.
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The Strangers: Chapter 2 Gets a Release Window
The Direct attended the official panel for The Strangers: Chapter 1 at WonderCon 2024 where producer Courtney Solomon confirmed when the world can expect to see Chapter 2.
Solomon noted fairly definitively that "Chapter 2 will come in the fall" later this year.
As for Chapter 3, a previous report from Entertainment Weekly indicated that all three entries in the new trilogy would be released in 2024. Though, it is strange that the third installment's release wasn't mentioned by Solomon at WonderCon.
While talking about how they approached these new films, Solomon reiterated that they feel they are a "retell[ing]" of the original and "not [a] remake:"
"We're all such big fans of the original ‘The Strangers’ that we’re sort of like, what do we do with this?... We wanted to sort of tell a bigger story. But we kind of, without giving anything away, we wanted to sort of know what happens afterward, but not answer the question, I guess, is the way to say it. And so the way to do that, we thought, was to sort of retell the original—not remake it, just retell it In our own way to service what ended up being a giant movie."
The filmmaker revealed how the original "script was 280 pages," which was far too long to play in movie theaters for a single film:
"The script was 280 pages when we did it. That's like a four-and-a-half-hour movie. So, we had to divide it into three chapters because it was just too long to play in movie theaters. Nobody could actually sit and watch [it]. It's a retelling of the original because we love where 'The Strangers' sort of came from the original. And you know, what that mythos became. And so that's where we wanted to start and telling a much broader story that actually, you know, follows one character through, you know, what I would call a real sort of downward slope."
When pressed for some details about what Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 could include, he teased audiences will finally "find out who Tamara is:"
"Well, you're going to find out who Tamara is, how about that? When The Strangers knock on the door, you know, they always ask, 'Is Tamara home?'. And so we thought one thing we wanted to let everybody know that everybody would probably not be too upset about is who Tamara is and why they ask for Tamara. So that is something that will come in two and three; that's a piece that you'll get."
Audiences will "get a lot of understanding [for] what makes these people tick," the filmmaker explained, all "without ever hearing them say a word:"
"And you’ll get a lot of understanding [for] what makes these people tick without actually ever hearing them say a word. And that's kind of what makes it interesting. We've kept it all the way to the bitter end of 'Chapter Three' in the same vein as what you got at the end of the original 2007 'The Strangers'. So, we read this stuff online; anybody that thinks we're actually going to spoon-feed all their shit to you is just nuts."
Madelaine Petsch, who plays Maya in the film, was also part of its panel, where she talked about her experience on the project.
Broaching how this new take on the story was shot across three different movies, the actress described how they "didn't have the luxury of time" while in production on each installment:
"As you're shooting these films, you learn more about this character and how they would negotiate their circumstances in each scene differently as you dive in deeper, and we would typically shoot a series of films with like you said, take time apart from the first film and then go rewrite the second film, and then go shoot the second film and then go make the third one. [Here, we] didn't have the luxury of time."
Petsch then described the biggest challenge of working all three chapters at the same time, which was "finding these characters" and making necessary adjustments throughout the process:
"So, we had to really dive in and spend hours every night after shooting reworking the script, so it felt like this journey was what you really want to [ride with us on]. So, shooting actually wasn't the behemoth that felt like it would be... [The biggest challenge for me was] actually finding these characters and the real circumstances they're in."
The Strangers: Chapter 1 hits theaters on May 17.
