Blumhouse Productions is known for igniting a number of horror franchises, though filmmaker Jeff Wadlow recently confirmed that his efforts to turn his 2018 movie Truth or Dare into a franchise nearly came to fruition during the coronavirus pandemic, but Blumhouse ultimately pulled the plug. While the film wasn’t a major hit with critics, sitting at only 15% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, it managed to take in $95.3 million worldwide on a reported budget of only $3.5 million. Unfortunately, Wadlow admits that the project will likely never come to fruition, as it seemed initially contingent upon the initial restraints of the pandemic.
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“I got a call from Jason [Blum],” Wadlow explained to Variety. “‘Would you be willing to move into the hotel on the Universal lot with all the actors from Truth or Dare and the crew, and quarantine with everyone and make a movie during the height of the pandemic?’ I was in, and we started prepping it. There’s this one cabin on the Universal lot where they’ve shot a million things — we were going to take over that cabin. But I think they started to realize that the health and safety risks involved at that moment, and also the cost implications of basically not letting people leave, would mean everyone was on overtime for the entire shoot, and they pulled the plug on it.”
The inspiration for the sequel came before the pandemic, however, as the film’s cast reportedly stayed in touch quite closely once the film wrapped, so while a majority of the cast had been killed off in the film, the concept was for the actors to play fictional versions of themselves being subjected to a similar game as in the movie.
“So we wrote this script — Truth or Dare IRL – and it begins with Markie and Olivia, Lucy [Hale] and Violett’s [Beane] characters,” the filmmaker revealed. “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 [Posey], 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.”
Posey himself initially created the idea, who also expressed disappointment in not getting to bring the project to life.
“It was definitely heartbreaking that we didn’t get a chance to do it, but I just love that story so much,” Posey confessed.
“The ship has sailed … Too much time has passed,” Wadlow pointed out. “But I think that would have been a lot of fun to make and the audience would have dug it.”
Wadlow’s latest film for Blumhouse, Imaginary, hits theaters on March 8th.
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