Last year, A Quiet Place grossed over $340 million at the worldwide box office, so it was only a matter of time before the studio demanded a sequel. Now, we’re just a few short months away from the release of A Quiet Place: Part II.
What’s great about this particular sequel is that, since John Krasinski wrapped up the plot neatly and provided a masterclass in world-building with the first A Quiet Place film, there’s no way he would’ve agreed to do a sequel if he didn’t have a really great idea for one. Why risk ruining that legacy if he wasn’t sure he could follow it up with an even scarier cinematic ride? Here is Everything We Know (So Far) About A Quiet Place: Part II.
John Krasinski is back in the director’s chair
With A Quiet Place, John Krasinski successfully shook his public persona as The Office’s Jim Halpert and became seen as a masterful horror filmmaker with a respect for the power of suspense that few directors working in the genre today seem to have.
So, it’s not at all surprising that Krasinski is returning to the director’s chair to call the shots on the movie’s upcoming sequel and continue the story he started. Obviously, Krasinski won’t also be appearing in front of the camera this time, because (SPOILER ALERT!) his character sacrificed himself to a brutal demise in the first film.
Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, and Noah Jupe are all back
While John Krasinski isn’t reprising his role from the first movie, due to his character’s shocking death, the other three leads from the original – Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, and Noah Jupe – will be returning to their roles.
At the end of the first film, Blunt’s mother character realized that her daughter’s (Simmonds) hearing aid could be used to disorientate the vicious aliens that have invaded Earth, giving her enough time to blow them away with her shotgun. With the actors reprising their roles in the sequel, then we’ll get to see this story thread paid off and also see what happens next.
It’ll be released on March 20, 2020
The studio has set March 20, 2020 as the release date for A Quiet Place: Part II. This places it close in the calendar to the first one’s release date (April 6). From the previous week, it will face competition from Universal’s remake of The Invisible Man written and directed by Leigh Whannell and the ensemble MonsterVerse mash-up Godzilla vs. Kong, which is expected to be a big deal at the multiplex.
In the following week, when the box office earnings usually struggle to keep afloat, A Quiet Place: Part II will contend with Disney’s now-controversial upcoming live-action remake of Mulan.
Krasinski is also writing the script for Part II
Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, the writers who conceived and drafted the first A Quiet Place movie originally, are not returning to work on the script for this one, despite having said they were working on ideas for scenes and storylines for a sequel when the first one came out.
Woods and Beck retained a story credit on the original film, while John Krasinski shared the screenwriting credit with them as he worked on a couple of drafts when he signed on to direct the film. For the sequel, Krasinski is the only credited screenwriter as he’s working from his own script.
It’ll differ from the sequels to Alien and Jaws
John Krasinski has said that the sequel to A Quiet Place will differentiate itself from sequels to prior monster movies like Alien and Jaws, in which the same monster keeps coming back again and again:
“This is a world you can play in. This isn’t just a character to remake – it’s actually a world, which is a whole different, very unique experience. It’s not like Alien or Jaws where the main villain is the thing you’re repeating; it’s an actual entire set of rules and the circumstance that the world has undergone that you can play in very different facets.”
There’s a different cinematographer this time
There’s a chance that A Quiet Place: Part II will have a different visual style than its predecessor, because a different cinematographer is in charge of shooting it. Fences and Molly’s Game’s cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen handled the photography on the first one, but she couldn’t fit the sequel into her schedule, because she’s currently working on George Nolfi’s The Banker, a movie being developed for exclusive release on Apple’s streaming service.
Instead, she’ll be replaced by Polly Morgan, who is shooting this year’s Lucy in the Sky, starring Natalie Portman as an astronaut who returns to Earth and loses her grip on reality. Exciting stuff.
Michael Bay is producing again
Transformers director Michael Bay is back on the producing team behind A Quiet Place: Part II, having also produced the first one (which a lot of casual moviegoers didn’t know about), along with his producing partners Andrew Form and Brad Fuller.
The trio’s production company Platinum Dunes has been responsible for some of the biggest hit scary movies in recent memory. A Quiet Place is their most acclaimed and successful horror movie to date, but they’ve also delivered some fascinating horror originals, like The Purge franchise and Ouija, and some remakes, like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th.
Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou have joined the cast
In addition to the returning cast members, actors Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou will be seen in A Quiet Place: Part II. Murphy is best known for his starring role as Tommy Shelby in the crime drama series Peaky Blinders, while he’s been seen on the big screen in Christopher Nolan movies like Dunkirk, Inception, and The Dark Knight trilogy.
Hounsou replaced Brian Tyree Henry, who dropped out due to scheduling conflicts, and is best remembered for his MCU role Korath the Pursuer from Captain Marvel and Guardians of the Galaxy, and his DCEU role as the Wizard Shazam from Shazam!.
The story is about other survivors
John Krasinski has hinted that, while the Abbott family will return, A Quiet Place: Part II will be all about the other survivors that inhabit this world:
“The thing that I loved in the movie, where my mind kept wandering as we were making it, was the question of who was on the other end of those fires, when the father lights the fire, and in the distance, those other fires light up. How did those people survive? How did that old man survive? In the extreme these characters are going through, there’s no room to think about that. They’re there, there’s an old man who’s about to scream, they just have to deal with that. I think it would be interesting to see what’s going on elsewhere at this same time.”
It won’t be your average run-of-the-mill sequel
According to John Krasinski, A Quiet Place: Part II won’t be a typical sequel: “Most sequels are about a villain returning or a hero returning, and you have to build this entire world around just the idea that I have a hero or a villain...With A Quiet Place 2, we have the world."
"So, it’s actually the world that’s built; it’s the idea that the rest of the world is going through this exact same experience. Are there other people that have to survive like this? It’s that idea of living through the set of circumstances, not again in the same way, obviously, but exploring it more. You only got to do it intimately for a small amount of time, so what happens next?”
