To help audiences to go deeper into the themes of CANDYMAN, Monkeypaw Productions and Universal Pictures collaborated with Langston League, an educational curriculum firm that specializes in culturally responsive instruction materials, to create The Official Companion Guide: An Exploration of Themes. With special insight from educators, Professor Tananarive Due and Professor John Jennings, this tool helps fans explore the legend of CANDYMAN and Black culture.
Click here to go to the Download Page.
Oscar® winner Jordan Peele unleashes a fresh take on the blood-chilling urban legend: Candyman. Filmmaker Nia DaCosta (Little Woods, next year’s The Marvels) directs this contemporary incarnation of the cult classic.
For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green neighborhood were terrorized by a word-of-mouth ghost story about a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, easily summoned by those daring to repeat his name five times into a mirror. In present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy (Emmy winner Yahya Abdul-Mateen II; Watchmen, Us) and his partner, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris; If Beale Street Could Talk, WandaVision), move into a luxury loft condo in Cabrini, now gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile millennials.
With Anthony’s painting career on the brink of stalling, a chance encounter with a Cabrini-Green old-timer (COLMAN DOMINGO; Zola, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) exposes Anthony to the horrific true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, and spurred on by his white art dealer, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh inspiration for paintings, unknowingly opening a door to a complex past that unravels his own sanity and unleashes a terrifying wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.
Universal Pictures presents, from Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures and Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld’s Monkeypaw Productions, in association with BRON Creative, Candyman. Candyman is directed by DaCosta and is produced by Ian Cooper (2022’s Nope, Us), Rosenfeld and Peele. The screenplay is by Peele & Rosenfeld and DaCosta. The film’s executive producers are David Kern, Aaron L. Gilbert and Jason Cloth.
Cast: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Colman Domingo
Director: Nia DaCosta
Screenplay by: Jordan Peele & Win Rosenfeld and Nia DaCosta
Producers: Ian Cooper, Win Rosenfeld, Jordan Peele
Executive Producers: David Kern, Aaron L. Gilbert, Jason Cloth