Sometimes, you get Christmas candy, and sometimes, you get Christmas coal. And a little lump of coal has arrived at all our doorsteps today, but then again, it’s not entirely unexpected (I predicted it here). Entertainment Weekly is reporting that filmmaker Jordan Peele’s Christmas Day 2024 film has been taken off the release calendar by Universal. This was essentially already made clear a few weeks back when Focus Features—which is under Universal, both of them owned by Comcast—announced that Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” was landing on the same day, December 25, 2024. It’s not like the two companies, separate but connected, were going to bet against each other in such a big way like that, so as soon as Eggers movie took that slot, you knew it was a wrap for Jordan Peele.
And that’s very likely because—unless someone knows otherwise—it doesn’t seem like a frame of film was ever shot. Peele’s movie was given a Christmas Day 2024 release date back in March 2023, so clearly, a script was ready, and production would have had to begin sometime that summer for it to be ready by then. But casting news never came; the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes began, and surely those delays were the culprit.
What’s it about? Details about the film have never been released, and he has kept everything about it on lockdown ever since it was announced. Peele has primarily worked in the genre of thoughtful horror with socially conscious contours. So far, he’s made the horror film “Get Out” (2017), which satirically cast white people as sociopaths (and won him the Best Oscar Original Screenplay), the creepy doppelgangers film, “Us” (2019), and the spectacle-like extra-terrestrial film, “Nope.”
Peele has previously teased a bit of horror and comedy for his next film, and in our “Nope” interview late last year, he definitely said he hoped to work with Keke Palmer again. He’s also teased continuing to tell stories within the “Nope” universe.
“We’re not over telling all of these stories,” he said in 2022. “The story of [Michael Busch’s] character has yet to be told, I can tell you that. Which is another frustrating way of saying, I’m glad people are paying attention. I do think they will get more answers on some of these things in the future.”
Wait, what does that mean? Who is Micheal Busch (given you can’t find him on IMDB as part of the movie)? Well, according to a Happy Sad Confused interview from last year, Peele said, “he’s in one of the trailers for ‘Nope,’ but isn’t in the film,” he explained and teased but didn’t share too much. “And yeah, I would imagine there’s some… yes, there will be a discovery about this character [eventually].”
Could this mystery movie, now likely coming in 2025, be a “Nope” -verse movie? We just have no clue. The last detail anyone has heard about Peele lately is that he is making a horror video game with heralded game creator Hideo Kojima, but presumably, it has nothing to do with his next film. If anyone has details or ideas about who Peele hopes to cast, feel free to send them our way. 😀
Time to adjust our 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2024 list.