Why Blumhouse Scrapped a ‘Truth or Dare’ Meta Sequel With Tyler Posey and Lucy Hale at the Last Minute (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

William Earl administrator The 2018 Blumhouse chiller “Truth or Dare” was a profitable hit for the company, making over $95 million worldwide on a $3.5 million budget.

The film — about a demon named Calux that is activated by the titular party game — starred a buzzy cast full of young talent, including “Teen Wolf” lead Tyler Posey, “Pretty Little Liars” star Lucy Hale, Violett Beane, Landon Liboiron and Sam Lerner, who all bonded offscreen during filming.

That camaraderie led to a sequel idea that could have been one of Blumhouse’s most innovative movies. While talking about his upcoming film “Imaginary,” Jeff Wadlow, who directed “Truth or Dare” and co-wrote it with Michael Reisz, Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, revealed the ambitious plans for a sequel that almost started production during quarantine. “We actually wrote a ‘Truth or Dare’ sequel,” he said. “In the first one, there’s about nine characters and seven of them die, and I didn’t want to do a ‘Final Destination’-style sequel, or ‘Truth or Dare’ and it’s happening again to a different group of people.

It just seemed kind of boring to me.” Yet Wadlow was inspired by the real-life friendships that developed between the cast while making the first film, and spun it into an idea inspired by the meta 1994 Freddy Krueger sequel “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.” “They had become great friends and were going on trips together, hanging out in Big Bear,” he said. “They had this idea: ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if ‘Truth or Dare’ happened to us while we were on vacation together, the actors?’ The joke became that the sequel should be called ‘Truth or Big Bear.’ I thought that was kind of a brilliant idea.