Following the release of the final installment of Netflix's Fear Street trilogy, director Leigh Janiak hopes to continue the franchise with an interconnected horror universe in the style of the MCU. Janiak helmed all three Fear Street entries with each film being heavily connected to the next. Various characters appear in each movie with an overarching story that requires all three movies to appreciate truly. The movies are based on R.L. Stine's Fear Street book series, and while Stine is mainly known for the YA-skewing Goosebumps books, the Fear Street films are geared toward more mature audiences.
The Fear Street trilogy was released over the course of three weeks on Netflix, starting with Fear Street Part One: 1994, followed by Fear Street Part Two: 1978, and concluding with Fear Street Part Three: 1666. Part Three sees Deena and her group of friends learn the truth of their town's curse before they dispatch the person responsible and free the town from its oppression. While the film ends on a generally upbeat note, it gives a simple nod to the fact that things may not be over. As the credits roll, audiences watch as an unidentified pair of hands snag the evil book from which the town's curse originated. Horror movies have the unique ability to deliver final moments that tease the fact that things may not be as resolved as the protagonists may have hoped, and Fear Street is no different.
Speaking with IndieWire, Janiak discussed her plans to hopefully continue with other installments of the Fear Street series. Janiak said she had plans for an interconnected universe of films, much like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even before she was hired for the trilogy. With the films already working as a small series of interconnected stories, Janiak called them "a new hybrid thing" before discussing her excitement about what else could happen within the universe. Check out what Janiak had to say below:
“One of the exciting things about Fear Street is the fact that the universe is big and allows for a lot of space. One of the things that I talked about before I was hired was that we have a potential here to create a horror Marvel [Cinematic Universe], where you can have slasher killers from lots of different eras. You have the canon of our main mythology that’s built around the fact that the devil lives in Shadyside, so there’s also room for everything else.”
“I think that my hope is that audiences like it enough that we can start building out [more], we can think about what another trilogy would be, what stand-alones would be, what TV would be. I don’t even think about it like TV or movies exactly anymore. That’s the great thing about Netflix and about what Fear Street is, which is kind of a hybrid new thing. I’m excited about the possibility of what else can happen.”
Janiak even commented on the era she would love to tackle in another installment of the series, saying, “I really started getting excited about a ’50s slasher movie, which I haven’t really seen." Given the scope of her plans from the start and her eye toward the franchise's continuation, Fear Street could have a bright future if Netflix deems it successful enough. Stine's Fear Street series contains 17 books, and while the new trilogy works as being inspired by the books rather than being direct adaptations, there is still plenty of material from which to pull. However, Universal's Dark Universe, which was intended to be an interconnected universe of horror icons like The Invisible Man and The Wolfman, crashed and burned with a single film released, 2017's The Mummy.
Given that such a high-profile horror universe has already failed, Netflix may be wary of such an endeavor. At this juncture, Netflix has not yet announced any plans for the future of Fear Street. However, if it pulls in good streaming numbers, Netflix would likely want the series to continue with a Fear Street Part Four or even several more films that were connected like the current trilogy, which is what Janiak would love to see. All three installments of the Fear Street trilogy are currently streaming on Netflix, and news of more may be forthcoming.
Source: IndieWire