We haven’t spent as much time staring at screens as we did during the past year, so it’s inevitable that movies would reflect that. There was the popular (and really good) Zoom horror film “Host,” and now, the sequel to the very successful thriller “Searching” finally found its directors.
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Deadline has the scoop on the sequel to “Searching,” reporting that Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, who edited the 2018 original, will be taking over directing duties for the new film. Aneesh Chaganty, who directed the original film, as well as the recent Hulu thriller “Run,” will return to produce the film alongside his Search Party partners Sev Ohanian and Natalie Qasabian, as well as Adam Sidman and Timur Bekmambetov, who all but kickstarted the “Screenlife” format with his “Unfriended” movies. Jo Henriquez will executive produce and Congyu E will serve as a co-producer on the film, which is expected to start production this spring.
The sequel will reportedly feature a completely new story and set of characters, and “an evolved Screenlife thriller format where the story plays out on the screens of the characters’ devices.” Merrick and Johnson are also writing the screenplay, based on a story by Sev Ohanian and Chaganty. The original film starred John Cho as a father desperately trying to find his missing teenage daughter using her laptop, as a local detective joins the investigation. The Screenlife format allowed the film to take place on various computer, phone, and TV screens.
“With such restrictive visual parameters, a movie like ‘Searching 2‘ requires a fresh visual style to separate it from the original,” Chaganty told Deadline. “I’ve contributed what I can to this growing sub-genre. But if there’s anyone on the planet with the potential to take it even further, it’s Nick and Will, who were there from the beginning.”