Beginning life as a creepy short, jumping to feature length and finding a champion in Guillermo del Toro has been good to Mama. Brother-sister team Andres and Barbara Muschietti enjoyed solid success with the horror movie earlier this year in the US, and its producers are considering a sequel.
Mama, which arrives on our shores this week (you can read our review right here) finds Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Jessica Chastain as Lucas and Annabel, a couple faced with the challenge of raising his two young nieces who were abandoned in the forest for five years.
Dragged into the woods by their desperate father, young Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse) are naturally disturbed, but that’s not the only issue. There’s also the small matter of an entity known as Mama, who appears very jealous of the girls’ affections. Lethally jealous…
According to Universal Pictures president of international David Kosse, the success of the film in just a few markets around the world has the studio thinking the co-production system that helped get the movie made can work for other projects and, possibly, birth a sequel. “We think there’s potential for a Mama franchise,” he tells Screen Daily. “We’d like to do another one. But those conversations are in the early stages.”
So there’s a chance for more creepiness – but don’t go expecting it to arrive immediately.