Searching Sequel Gets 2023 Release Date

Five years after Aneesh Chaganty broke into the film industry in a big way with his directorial debut Searching, its sequel, Missing, now has a release date from Screen Gems. Missing, which is described only as “the next installment in the Searching franchise,” stars Storm Reid and Nia Long. The film is set to hit U.S. theaters on February 24, 2023. Searching was a weird and remarkable little film; a U.S./Russia co-production, the film stars John Cho as a father working with a police detective played by Debra Messing in order to find his missing 16-year-old daughter (Michelle La).

The film is set entirely on computer screens and smartphones, which made it a unique watch — and Cho marked the first major American studio thriller to be toplined by an actor of Asian descent. It ended up grossing $75 million against a budget of less than $1 mllion.

“With such restrictive visual parameters, a movie like [Missing] requires a fresh visual style to separate it from the original,” Aneesh Chaganty said in a statement. “I’ve contributed what I can to this growing sub-genre. But if there’s anyone on the planet with the potential to take it even further, it’s Nick and Will, who were there from the beginning.”

“Searching is so far the most successful movie shot in the Screenlife format and the sequel is set to become a new milestone,” producer Timur Bekmambetov added. “What seemed like an experimental technique a few years ago has been given a momentum now with more and more industry professionals turning to this digital filmmaking technique.”

Details on the plot are under tight wraps, except that it “will feature a new set of characters and an evolved Screenlife thriller format where the story plays out on the screens of the characters’ devices.” 

Here’s the closest thing we have to a synopsis, which is just from its Wikipedia page:

Missing is an upcoming American computer screen thriller film written and directed by Nick Johnson and Will Merrick, from a story by Sev Ohanian and Aneesh Chaganty. It is a standalone sequel to the 2018 film Searching, and stars Storm Reid, Nia Long, and Joaquim de Almeida.