Adam Wingard has already directed ten features, despite the fact that he doesn’t turn 40 until next year, with his creative collaborator Simon Barrett being key to his journey from low budget horror auteur to the brains behind upcoming studio blockbusters Face/Off 2 and ThunderCats.
The duo have partnered up on A Horrible Way to Die, You’re Next, anthology effort What Fun We’re Having: 4 Stories About Date Rape, Blair Witch and The Guest, with Barrett also confirmed to be involved in the scripting process for both of Wingard’s upcoming projects. Around the time of Godzilla vs. Kong‘s release, the director hinted that a sequel to The Guest might end up happening as a limited series, and in a new interview of his own, Barrett teased that something is in the works, but it won’t be what fans are expecting.
“I can give you a very concrete answer to that question, which is, we are doing something related to The Guest. And it is concretely happening, but it is not a feature film or a comic book, because I think that’s what people would expect us to do. And I think that’s the thing that no one actually wants us to do, because I think if we actually made a feature film version of The Guest 2, or realistically, the graphic novel version would just be a cheaper version of trying to achieve kind of the same thing narratively.
I think that could only disappoint people at this juncture, because people have to remember that the same weird, quasi-original artistic sensibility that caused me to write The Guest in the first place would continue to guide me with a Guest sequel. So I would likely do something perverse, and just have Dan’s character be the successful owner of a local hardware store and the entire story is just about him dealing with a difficult supplier, but in a totally legal and healthy way, because he’s totally grown as a person.
So, we’re never going to do just like, The Guest 2. Because I just don’t think The Guest was just never meant to have a sequel like that. However, at this point, enough people have asked us about it, that of course, inevitably Adam and I have had enough conversations about what we would hypothetically do, that we’ve now developed a bunch of ideas that we’ve become very attached to, because we think they’re actually good.”
Barrett’s right in saying that The Guest was never designed with an eye to launching a franchise, but it’s nonetheless found itself as a firm cult classic since disappointing at the box office back in January 2014, where it failed to even recoup half of the modest $5 million budget. However, it’s become a favorite on streaming as well, and both of the key creatives behind the psychological thriller have admitted their surprise that it’s one of the movies they get asked about most often.
The good news is that there’s definitely something in store for Dan Stevens’ David Collins, we just don’t know what it is yet. Wingard’s increased standing and clout in the industry following the success of Godzilla vs. Kong should certainly make the prospect of continuing the story of The Guest a much easier sell around Hollywood than it was a couple of years ago, though.
