This Is Not the ‘Speak to Me’ Sequel We Had in Thoughts

A number of years in the past, sibling directing duo Danny and Michael Philippou made the leap from viral YouTube movies to the Hollywood A-list, with A24 choosing up their breakout function Speak to Me. On the time, the brothers teased their sequel ambitions, and a follow-up to the horror hit was officially greenlit in August of 2023. Now we’ve information of extra Speak to Me on the way in which, but it surely’s not the cinematic sequel followers have been ready for.

In response to Variety, the Speak to Me universe will broaden with a sequence of six half-hour episodes “created completely for Meta headsets and shot absolutely in 3D, making for a totally immersive XR expertise that may enable horror followers to really feel like they’re residing out the fear.”

That terror, in fact, will draw on the film’s premise: a disembodied hand with the facility to own anybody adventurous or silly sufficient to seize ahold of it. A short jaunt into the spirit realm could also be thrilling, but it surely will also be extraordinarily harmful, because the Speak to Me characters be taught when their celebration sport takes an irresponsible flip. “Trapped in a hell dimension” isn’t a good way to spend your prime years, children!

It seems like that lesson will likely be discovered anew, because the sequence will observe “a bunch of younger vacationers chasing the last word celebration on a European island till they uncover the Hand, a supernatural excessive deadlier than any drug.”

Whereas the Philippous are aboard as govt producers, a brand new artistic staff is guiding the Meta and XRTV sequence collaboration. Darren Brandl got here up with the idea with Trent Atherton, with Atherton writing all six episodes; Craig William Macneill (Fortress Rock, Westworld) is the director.

Brandl is the co-founder of XRTV, and in a press release to Selection, he defined why Speak to Me was an excellent challenge for “prolonged actuality,” or XR.

“The promise of XR is this concept that we will now map the story into your personal area so you’re feeling such as you’re inside it … its superpower is presence: that awe of being transported, the unsettling feeling {that a} demon is with you—in your room,” he instructed the commerce; as for style bona fines, he’s additionally a part of Eli Roth’s CryptTV, which creates digital horror content material.

“Speak to Me is the right immersive IP as a result of it’s about younger adults who search the Hand to expertise the euphoria of possession however find yourself stricken by breaking via to the spirit world. It made possession enjoyable, and the scares unforgettable.”

In different phrases, the Speak to Me sequence goals to make you’re feeling such as you’re really possessed, which is definitely intriguing.

Nonetheless, we’re nonetheless holding out hope for Speak to Me 2 to hit theaters ultimately, bringing a much more accessible (if much less immersive) continuation of the story to followers. And that appears to nonetheless be within the playing cards; when the Philippous launched Deliver Her Again earlier this 12 months, they spoke in regards to the sequel in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.

“Once we submitted Deliver Her Again to among the funding locations, they have been like, ‘What about Speak to Me 2?’ So there was stress from individuals,” Danny Philippou instructed THR in Might. “[Talk to Me 2] was going to be the following challenge, however I used to be like, ‘I actually, actually need to make [Bring Her Back]. Is it okay if I make this one?’ So A24 was on board, and so they allowed us to.”

Michael Philippou added, “To go straight into Speak to Me 2 all the time felt like it will simply be capitalizing on hype, versus what’s the fitting story we need to inform subsequent. We wanted a break from Speak to Me 2 so we will revisit it with recent eyes.”

As of but, there’s no launch date or title for the Speak to Me sequence from Meta and XRTV.

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