Despite rumors to the contrary, director Christopher Landon has confirmed that there are no plans for a Happy Death Day 3 in the works. The first Happy Death Day film was released in 2017 and starred Jessica Rothe as college student Tree Gelbman, who is murdered on her birthday and finds herself stuck in a time loop and forced to relive the day of her death until she can discover the identity of her masked killer and prevent her own murder. Described as Groundhog Day meets Scream, the black comedy slasher won over critics and horror fans alike and was a box office hit, in spite of its relatively small budget.
Its follow-up Happy Death Day 2U was released earlier this year. The sequel took a sci-fi turn that saw Tree travel to a parallel dimension via a quantum reactor and paid obvious homage to Back to the Future franchise. The movie’s post-credit scene certainly seemed like it was setting up another sequel and Landon also confirmed that he’d love to extend the first two Happy Death Day movies into a trilogy with a “bonkers” third installment. Though Blumhouse hadn’t officially greenlit another sequel, a third film seemed likely but back in March Jason Blum announced that Happy Death Day 3 probably wouldn’t happen after all, presumably because Happy Death Day 2U didn’t perform as well as its predecessor at the box office.
Nevertheless, in the past few days a handful of media outlets reported that Happy Death Day 3 was actually in development. According to Christopher Landon, however, the news was just a rumor. The director took to Twitter to shoot down the rumors and clarify the situation for Happy Death Day fans. You can check out his tweet below.
Note that Landon jokingly mentions that the Happy Death Day franchise might have a future if Netflix fancies picking up the sequel. Jokes aside, that would suggest that Landon would be happy to continue the franchise under a different production company if Blumhouse is no longer interested in making a sequel with him.
Of course, it’s only been a matter of months since Happy Death Day 2 was released, so it could be a little premature to be judging the future of the franchise with any certainty. It could be a case of ‘never say never’ but, for the time being, Happy Death Day 3 is not happening. Sorry, horror fans.
Next: 5 Recent Horror Movies That We Hope Will Be The Start Of A Franchise (& 5 We Don’t)
Source: Christopher Landon
