Cruella de Vil will be back. Yes, Emma Stone will return as the 101 Dalmatian villain in a future sequel as Disney announced that a sequel is officially in the early stages of development.
Cruella was released last week on 28th May in theatres and is simultaneously available on Disney+ with Premier Access. The film has already received praise for its direction, acting, and costume design alongside the extremely unique soundtracks by Nicholas Britell.
Those who do not know, Cruella is based on the classic Disney villain Cruella de Vil aka Estella Miller, who was an aspiring fashion designer and will go on to become a notorious and dangerous obsessed criminal. This movie also proved the old point once again, which was proven earlier by Joaquin Phoenix’s ‘Joker’ in 2019 that just like the origin stories of the heroes, the origin stories of the villains are equally intriguing and a strong selling point for the movies.
The makers of Cruella are also impressed by the way the movie performed on Disney+ with premiere access. “We are very pleased with Cruella’s box office success, in conjunction with its strong Disney+ Premier Access performance to date. We look forward to a long run as audiences continue to enjoy this fantastic film,” a Disney spokesperson said in a statement.
Apart from Emma Stone as Cruella, the movie features Emma Thompson as Cruella’s mother Baroness von Hellman along with Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser, Emily Beecham, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, and Mark Strong in supporting roles. Earlier in May 2021, both Stone and Thompson stated that they might go for a second Cruella film in the style of The Godfather Part II which could serve as both a sequel and prequel. And now that Disney officially announced the news of the sequel, it’s also confirmed that director Craig Gillespie and writer Tony McNamara are likely to return for the development of the second Cruella film.
Success of the origin story of classic super-villains also indicates that audiences were always interested in the back stories of these heinous criminals, it’s just that the creators were not brave enough earlier to focus a story on these characters instead of heroes or superheroes. But now, one thing is for sure that with these success of Joker, Cruella and even, Venom, and the developments of the movies on other anti-heroes such as Morbius and Kraven The Hunter, we might be standing at paradigm shift were both the stories of heroes and the villains will equally be enjoyable and viable for new movies, which is an unique and good thing for the future.