With the recent news that there might be a continuation to the Happy Death Day franchise somewhere down the line, here’s why the future of the series should be a TV show and not another movie. In a recent interview with Collider, Blumhouse founder and CEO Jason Blum has gone on record stating that "I have a plan. Put it this way. I'm not saying goodbye to Happy Death Day. I'll say it like that." Looks like the genre-hopping Happy Death Day is not dead after all and there is indeed a plan in the works. But is another feature-length sequel the right choice for the franchise moving forward?
The update from Blum comes more than two and a half years after the release of Happy Death Day 2U, the sequel to the original film, which debuted in theaters in February 2019 to generally positive reviews and a profitable $64.6 million box office performance — albeit far less impressive than its predecessor. Less than two years prior, the first Happy Death Day raked in a whopping $125.5 million against its $4.8 million budget and was well-regarded by audiences and film critics alike. With that in mind, it might make sense for Blumhouse to shift its franchise — perhaps alongside Freaky as part of a Happy Death Day universe crossover — from the silver screen and onto television with a continuation in long-form drama format.
Such a move wouldn’t be the first time a horror franchise has been remade for TV, or had a sequel that came in the form of a TV show. There is a current trend of popular franchises turning to television to reinvigorate their cultural heartbeat and bring in a new audience of viewers. With both Chucky and I Know What You Did Last Summer being released just this month, the trend is arguably in full force at the moment. Just a few years ago, the beloved Scream franchise was also reimagined into an anthology slasher series which ran for three seasons and was in some ways better than the Scream movies that preceded it. Other recent horror franchise ventures to television include The Omen TV series Damien, Wolf Creek, and The Exorcist, so it would fall in line for Blumhouse to follow suit with Happy Death Day 3.
Considering how the plot of the previous Happy Death Day films has evolved and grown in its complexity, a move to television could well be beneficial. Time travel films are generally intricately built, narratively speaking, but the time loop complications in Happy Death Day might be one notch above the usual. While the first film centered exclusively on protagonist Theresa Gelbman and the many times "Tree" died while stuck in a time loop, Happy Death Day 2U was bolder in its storytelling. The sequel saw other characters ending up in a time loop while Tree found herself in a variation of the original time loop within an alternate reality. With the initial concept elaborated upon to such a considerable extent, there is a real opportunity to expand the narrative scope of the franchise and focus on characters like Ryan Phan and Danielle Bouseman as they deal with their own time loop situations. Even Tree has more left on her plate to deal with considering how Happy Death Day 2U ends.
Indeed, the post-credits scene in Happy Death Day 2U unveiled DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), an organization that caught wind of the reactor responsible for interfering with the flow of time and brought in Tree and co. to assist in sorting out the variables. Danielle consequently became trapped in a time loop as a test subject, setting up a new avenue for the future of the franchise to take. There are many implications to Happy Death Day 2U’s overarching plot, and another movie might not be enough to resolve them. This is precisely why Blumhouse should opt to give Happy Death Day 3 the television treatment.