Remember that period during the 2018 winter holiday season when no one seemed capable of talking about anything other than Netflix's Bird Box? Whether they were watching it, debating its central plausibility and logic, making memes inspired by it, or taking to the streets to perform dangerous stunts because of it, for at least a month, the Susanne Bier film was everywhere. Middling reviews aside, Bird Box had reached a level of cultural ubiquity, dominating entertainment discourse for an unprecedented amount of time. Of course, Netflix was eventually going to make a sequel out of it.
If you've forgotten — or you're one of the few people that managed to avoid the film the first go-round — Bird Box follows the always-terrific Sandra Bullock as she tries to protect herself and her two children from an ominous threat: some type of monster that, when seen, forces the viewer to live through their worst fears, eventually driving them to suicide. To avoid going insane, those who are still alive are forced to wear blindfolds whenever they venture outside so as to avoid ever seeing the dangerous creature. In addition to Bullock, the film also boasted an all-star cast of recognizable names, including Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson, BD Wong, Lil Rel Howery, Danielle Macdonald, Jackie Weaver, and Machine Gun Kelly.
And now, the film's creative team is preparing even more scares. In an interview with Inverse about his new book Malorie, Josh Malerman, the author of the 2014 novel that inspired the 2018 Netflix film, mentioned that a film adaptation of his soon-to-be-released novel, itself a Bird Box sequel, was already in the works. "I can't say much, but I can say that it is in development," Malerman told Inverse. "Sometimes it’s weird, all this secrecy, but I'm game."
The decision to pursue a sequel should surprise no one. After all, upon the original's hotly anticipated release, the notoriously tight-lipped Netflix broke their vow of silence to reveal that the film had the best first week of any Netflix original movie...ever. "Took off my blindfold this morning to discover that 45,037,125 Netflix accounts have already watched Bird Box," the streaming service tweeted from its official @NetflixFilm account. "Best first 7 days ever for a Netflix film!"
Whether the sequel will inspire a similarly rapturous response remains to be seen — particularly since there is no word yet on whether A-List movie star Sandra Bullock, a large draw for the original film, will return. But if she does return — and I'm sure Netflix will spare no expense to get her back, if at all possible — prepare for yet another period of endless discourse. Anyone ready to start TikToking "The Malorie Challenge?"
