*Warning: The following contains spoilers for the ending of 2018’s A Quiet Place*
John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place, an original horror film not based on any existing intellectual property, outperformed all box office expectations when it took in nearly $330 million off a tiny $17 million budget thanks to universal critical and audience praise earlier this year. As Paramount (PARA) Pictures’ second highest-grossing film of the year (behind Mission: Impossible—Fallout) it makes sense that the studio would want to capitalize with a sequel. However, Krasinski’s involvement with a potential follow-up remained a question for some time.
“I’ll be honest with you: I really didn’t want to do the sequel,” the actor-writer-director recently told Deadline. But over the summer, the rising filmmaker was confirmed to be involved in some capacity and now he’s revealed that he’s currently writing a second feature film set in the alien-infested world he helped create.
However, given the standalone nature of the story and Krasinski’s busy schedule—he’s currently filming a second season of Amazon’s Jack Ryan—it’s unclear what form a sequel would take. How can this self-contained narrative continue without feeling like a contrived cash grab? Fortunately, Krasinski is self-aware enough to recognize the flaws of studio filmmaking and is setting out to provide fans with a new type of experience the second time around. As he told Deadline:
“[T]he idea for it is pretty simple. I’m writing now—I don’t have it fleshed out—but the thought that occurred to me, that really excited me about it, was that most sequels are about the return of a hero or a villain. You take this character that people loved once and you bring them back, and you have to create a new world around them. We have the exact opposite setup. We have the world, and you can drop whoever you want into that world and everyone feels connected to it. The reason I decided to go back, in the end, was this world is so rich, and it’s so much fun to explore. There are so many different things to see now. Everyone else in the world is experiencing this, so I’m curious to see what that looks like from another perspective.”
Krasinski obviously won’t be returning to his role since (spoiler alert) he died in the first film. But from the way he talks about the idea, it doesn’t sound as if Emily Blunt’s character or her family will return either. Admittedly, it would be intriguing to see how other regions of the world and characters in different circumstances dealt with this apocalyptic event and the resulting fallout. As Krasinski said, he has the canvas with which to paint on already in place—it’s just a matter of exploring.
