'Cruella 2' In Early Development With Director Craig Gillespie & Screenwriter Tony McNamara Expected To Return

“The good thing about evil people is you can always trust them to do something, well, evil.” Of course, there’s a metaphor in there about movie studios, but we’ll let you figure that one out. Regardless, following the success of “Cruella” in theaters and Disney+, Disney is already developing a “Cruella 2” sequel.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the second installment will see director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Tony McNamara return to the franchise. We have to assume that they’ll be able to wrangle star Emma Stone for “Cruella 2” as well.

Craig Gillespie is currently working on the Hulu miniseries “Pam & Tommy” led by Lily James and Sebastian Stan, and the AppleTV+ mini-series “Physical,” comes out later this month.

“Cruella” faced tough competition against Paramount’s “A Quiet Place Part II” at the box office in its opening weekend. Nevertheless, the Disney pic grossed $27 million over the Memorial Day long weekend and is approaching $50 million globally before the second-weekend earnings kick in. But keep in mind, it also debuted on Disney+’s Premium service simultaneously and clearly, with a sequel greenlit, Disney is pleased with those results.

While the studio has had some impressive box office success adapting its popular library of beloved animated films to modern live-action feature films, “Cruella” attempted something different by focusing on “101 Dalmatians” villain Cruella de Vill in a period origin film that wasn’t directly inspired by existing material.

Plenty of the updated live-action projects from Disney have been mostly carbon copies of their animated counterparts, making it extremely difficult to understand what the draw could be to seek out these projects outside of nostalgia. However, “Cruella” and “The Lion King” prequel from “Moonlight” direct Barry Jenkins have attempted to forge their own paths by taking the prequel route, allowing them to develop slightly more original stories in the process.

Other upcoming live-action films from the studio based on their animated library include Marc Webb‘s “Snow White & The Seven Dwarves,” Rob Marshall‘s “The Little Mermaid,” Robert Zemeckis‘ “Pinocchio,” and “Peter Pan & Wendy” from “The Green Knight” director David Lowery.