Bird Box was Netflix’s big winter event movie just before Christmas back in 2018. Sandra Bullock starred in the adaptation of Josh Malerman‘s sci-fi thriller novel of the same name, which takes place in the aftermath of the decimation of the world’s population by an mysterious entity that compels people to commit suicide, usually in a gruesome fashion, after they’ve laid their eyes upon it.
Through flashbacks we see the beginning of the widespread death as Sandra Bullock tries to find sanctuary with her two kids in tow. Now we’ll see how her story continues because Josh Malerman has confirmed that Netflix is currently developing a sequel based on his follow-up book Malorie, named after Sandra Bullock’s character.
Inverse got word of the Bird Box sequel in an interview with Josh Malerman leading up to the release of Malorie on July 21. You can check out the synopsis for the book below, but just beware that it contains spoilers for the first movie:
Twelve years after Malorie and her children rowed up the river to safety, a blindfold is still the only thing that stands between sanity and madness. One glimpse of the creatures that stalk the world will drive a person to unspeakable violence. There remains no explanation. No solution. All Malorie can do is survive—and impart her fierce will to do so on her children. Don’t get lazy, she tells them. Don’t take off your blindfold. AND DON’T LOOK.
But then comes what feels like impossible news. And with it, the first time Malorie has allowed herself to hope. Someone very dear to her, someone she believed dead, may be alive.
Malorie has already lost so much: her sister, a house full of people who meant everything, and any chance at an ordinary life. But getting her life back means returning to a world full of unknowable horrors—and risking the lives of her children again.
Because the creatures are not the only thing Malorie fears: There are the people who claim to have caught and experimented on the creatures. Murmerings of monstrous inventions and dangerous new ideas. And rumors that the creatures themselves have changed into something even more frightening.
Malorie has a harrowing choice to make: to live by the rules of survival that have served her so well, or to venture into the darkness and reach for hope once more.
Based on the synopsis, I wonder if Tom (Trevante Rhodes), a fellow survivor who Malorie fell in love with, somehow survived. It seemed pretty clear that he shot himself in the head, but the synopsis does say the news seems impossible. Since the death of her sister (Sarah Paulson) is mentioned, it doesn’t seem like she’ll be coming back. Is there someone else close to her that we don’t know about who may have somehow returned?
Although the book says the story picks up 12 years after the end of the first book, we do spend some time at the school for the blind where Malorie and the children found sanctuary. Malerman says we start at the school, flash forward a few years later, and then the main story in the book begins 10 years after that.
Bird Box was a big hit when it was released, bringing in around 45 million viewers in the first week of release, which was enough to be Netflix’s most watched movie launch at the time. Though the movie felt like it tread the same territory as A Quiet Place, albeit with a different sense impacted, it did pack an emotional punch and plenty of suspense, not to mention gruesome deaths. Will audiences turn out in the same numbers for the sequel?
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