UPDATE: due to the just-announced indefinite postponement of Candyman‘s release (sometime in 2021), we are also delaying our special issue on the Candyman films. Our third special issue will instead be on Lovecraft Country–and you can check out the call for papers here.
The first Candyman, directed by Bernard Rose, was released in 1993, starring Tony Todd, Virginia Madsen, and Kasi Lemmons. It translated Clive Barker’s1985 short story, “The Forbidden” from a white working-class housing development in England to an African-American housing development in Chicago, Cabrini Green. Candyman tells a powerful story of race and the lingering aftermath of slavery in the US, mixing the supernatural with historical and social realism. Numerous critics have discussed the film, including Adam Ochonicky, Lucy Fife Donaldson, Robin Means Coleman, Diane Long Hoeveler, Mikel Koven, Laura Wyrick, Kirsten Monan Thompson, Aviva Briefel and Sianne Ngaî, and Fred Botting. As the horror genre is, in the twenty-first century, becoming increasingly political, much more remains to be said about Candyman and its two sequels–Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (Bill Condon, 1995) and Candyman: Day of the Dead (Turi Meyer, 1999)–all of which center racism in America.
Despite the powerful presence of Tony Todd as Candyman in all three films, they have been notably white productions. October 16, 2020, however, will see the release of a “spiritual sequel” to Candyman, and it is a predominantly African-American production–directed by Nia DaCosta, co-written by DaCosta, Jordan Peele, and Win Rosenfeld, produced by Peele, and with a largely Black cast (including Tony Todd). In this new Candyman, viewers will finally experience a Black re-writing of a Candyman mythos that has been, until now, almost exclusively white.
