Blumhouse Almost Made a TRUTH OR DARE Sequel Inspired By Wes Craven's NEW NIGHTMARE
Blumhouse’s 2018 horror movie Truth or Dare was actually a pretty big hit. The movie wasn’t really the best movie, but it was made on a $3.5 million budget and it ended up pulling in $95 million at the box office. That’s a huge profit, and, surprisingly, they didn’t follow it up with a sequel. But, there was an idea for a sequel, and it sounds like it would’ve made a fun movie!
Truth or Dare director Jeff Wadlow offered some insight on the unproduced sequel in an interview with Variety, saying:
“We actually wrote a ‘Truth or Dare’ sequel. In the first one, there’s about nine characters and seven of them die. I didn’t want to do a ‘Final Destination’-style sequel or ‘Truth or Dare’ and it’s happening again to a different group of people. It just seemed kind of boring to me.”
Wadlow goes on to explain that the sequel idea he came up with came out of the real-life friendship between the cast members of the first film. They jokingly tossed around the idea of a meta sequel where they play themselves, and after the concept was pitched to Wadlow, he wrote a script titled Truth or Dare IRL. The whole concept was inspired by Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. Wadlow revealed:
“It begins with Markie and Olivia, Lucy and [Violett Beane’s] characters. They’re in this scene, and it feels like our ‘Final Destination’ kind-of ‘Truth or Dare’ scene, and Markie starts laughing in the middle of it. You hear, ‘Cut!’ and the director walks on the set, and we do the ‘New Nightmare’ treatment where we reveal that Lucy and Violett are still friends. They’re going to go on this trip with the other actors from ‘Truth or Dare,’ with Tyler, Landon [Liboiron] and Sam [Lerner].
“Everyone who was in the first film, they’re all buddies, and we find out what happened is the writers of the first film had researched a real demon. Just as Calux can haunt a game in the film, he’s now decided to haunt a movie in the real world. It was scary and surreal and funny and played a lot with subjectivity.”
That would’ve been a great way to handle the sequel! So, why didn’t Blumhouse roll forward with it? Producer Jason Blum ordered Truth or Dare IRL to be shot during the start of the covid-19 quarantine, and during that time everything fell apart.
Wadlow doesn’t think the sequel will get made now, saying “The ship has sailed.” It sounds like it would have made a better film than the first one.