The Candyman 2020 remake will be set in Chicago’s Near North Side

Jordan Peele is producing what looks to be another must-see horror film. He joins forces with director Nia DaCosta to remake the cult classic Candyman. It will be released in time to spook audiences this summer.

The first just came out last night. We still do not know a lot about the film. However, we do know is that it will be set in the gentrified Near North Side of present-day Chicago.

The trailer mentions the now-demolished Cabrini-Green, which was the site of the original horror film. The premise remains largely the same – saying Candyman’s name five times will conjure up a boogeyman-like hook-handed serial killer – although the characters and other plot elements have been updated.

The original Candyman grossed almost $26 million at the box office on a budget of $8 million back in 1992. So it wasn’t a runaway hit, but it did make enough money to see two sequels get produced. The first, Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh, came out in 1995. Meanwhile, Candyman: Day of the Dead came out in 1999 as a direct-to-video film.

Description from Universal Pictures

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 (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II; HBO’s Watchmen, Us) and his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris; If Beale Street Could Talk, The Photograph), 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; HBO’s Euphoria, Assassination Nation) exposes Anthony to the tragically horrific nature of the true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh grist for paintings, unknowingly opening a door to a complex past that unravels his own sanity and unleashes a terrifyingly viral wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.