Cruella 2 In the Works After Disney+ Success

Emma Stone isn’t done as Cruella de Vil. Right as Cruella gets ready to hit theaters for its second weekend, Disney has pushed a sequel into development. A new report for THR says the main crew behind the feature is expected to return, including Stone, director Craig Gillespie, and writer Tony McNamara. Premiering in theaters and on Disney+ at the same time, the villain origin story has already grossed $48.5 million at the global box office. That number doesn’t figure in the $30 price it costs families on Disney+’s Premiere Access premium tier.

In Cruella, Stone plays the classic 101 Dalmations villain and showcases her descent into madness. She appears in the flick alongside Emma Thompson, Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser, Mark Strong, and others.

Initially set to hit theaters only, Cruella and Black Widow were both bumped to a Disney+ day-and-date release at the same time.

“They sent the script over, and the script wasn’t what I felt that I could excel at,” Gillespie previously told Collider of the film’s script. “It was a little bit more straight with the narrative and the drama, and I really wanted to infuse this energy and this tone and this playfulness to it. That gave me some pause, as to whether I could actually even get it to that point. I wasn’t sure if I could really get it to a place that suited my sensibility. But then, we talked to Tony McNamara. I was working on a project with him, and Emma had just done The Favourite with him, and Disney was supportive, so he came in and did a rewrite. Once we got that rewrite, then I was like, ‘All right, now I’ve got a movie. Now I know what I can do with this.’”

“The skeleton of the movie was there,” he added. “Dana Fox had really cracked that. That ending was in place and the duality of what was going on. What Tony brought to it was really upping the attitude and the punk vibe of it with Cruella and just that conflict between the Baroness and Cruella. That dialogue and the amount of screen time they ended up getting, he devised that structure where she goes undercover for the second half of the movie, so they get to stay together on screen a lot. That was huge, to crack that. That’s when it’s fun, when the two of them in a room together.”

Cruella is now playing in theaters and is currently available through Disney+ Premier Access. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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