With their comedy sketch series Key & Peele now finished, Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key are turning their attention to solo projects. And Peele is headed in an unexpected direction: horror.
The performer has a deal to write and director a horror thriller called Get Out for Jason Blum’s mini-budget company Blumhouse Productions. It’ll follow a young African-American man who visits the sprawling estate owned by his white girlfriend’s family. And we, assume, discovers something terrible.
“People know me for my work in comedy, but now I’ll get to focus on my passion for writing and directing horror films,” Peele says in a statement picked up by The Wrap. “Like comedy, horror has an ability to provoke thought and further the conversation on real social issues in a very powerful way. Get Out takes on the task of exploring race in America, something that hasn’t really been done within the genre since Night Of The Living Dead 47 years ago. It’s long overdue.” Big shoes to step into, then, but Peele has proved he’s a keen purveyor of social commentary through comedy, so it’ll be fascinating to see what he does with horror as a tool.
Key and Peele aren’t completely going their separate ways – they have comedy gangster pic Keanu making its way through post-production and are developing at least one film based on a sketch from the show. Then there are their efforts to make a new Police Academy movie. Peele also has a voice in DreamWorks Animation’s kids’ book adaptation Captain Underpants, which will be out in 2017.