Does a movie that kinda bombed at the time get a second chance 15 years after the fact when it’s become a modern-day cult classic? Screenwriter Diablo Cody is hoping so. In a recent interview with Bloody Disgusting, discussing her upcoming film, “Lisa Frankenstein”— directed by Zelda Williams and releasing in theaters on February 9—the Academy Award-winning screenwriter (“Juno”) reflected back on the picture and said she would love to do a sequel to “Jennifer’s Body,” the 2009 horror comedy from director Karyn Kusama starring Megan Fox.
READ MORE: 10 Years Later, Here’s What ‘Jennifer’s Body’ Has To Teach Us
As the film seems to have received a second life on DVD and from Gen Z audiences discovering, Cody’s feelings about the movie have changed.
“I mean, it’s gotten progressively happier for me,” she said. “At first, I was like, I was excited about it, obviously, but I was also a little bit salty because I remember thinking, well, where was this audience when the movie came out? It was a critical [and] commercial failure. I was pretty humiliated, to be perfectly honest with you. It was a rough experience having that movie come out. It was rough for me, it was rough for Megan [Fox]… [then] people started suddenly talking about it like it was a good movie, which I had thought all along.”
“Jennifer’s Body” was certainly mistreated by critics at the time, and at the box office, the movie only grossed $31.5 million worldwide and only $16.2 million domestically, on a budget that was reportedly only $16 million. That’s not terrible, but not great, and not a viable reason for studios to ever go ahead with sequels. That said, she would love to, regardless.
“Yes! I wanna do a sequel,” Cody admitted when asked. “I am not done with ‘Jennifer’s Body.’ I just need to find… I need to partner with people who believe in me as much as I do, and that hasn’t really happened yet. I need someone to believe in it who has a billion dollars.”
That might be the rub. Even if “Jennifer’s Body” has been reappraised by a new audience, it’s doubtful a studio is going to fork out millions for a new sequel unless the budget is minuscule and the return on investment is going to soar (and given it was a 20th Century Fox films, it would now fall under Disney/20th Century Studios).
What’s next for Cody? Well, she revealed she has another horror project in the works. “I have an unfinished one kicking around that I need to finish that I think is definitely the most straight horror, like, overt, gore, scary thing I’ve ever written,” she teased. “I’m really proud of the concept, and I just have to push myself across the finish line.”
At this point, I’d bet on a new horror movie from Diablo Cody rather than a “Jennifer’s Body” sequel, and if she wanted to pitch it, she should have done it during the streaming age in the pandemic when such projects were getting green-lit like giving candy to children. But that era is most certainly over, but hey, who knows? Stranger things have happened in the past.
In the meantime, revisit the trailer below, and you can always check out our tenth anniversary feature on “Jennifer’s Body” to get an updated perspective on the movie.
