A Quiet Place Part II: Now Releasing Sooner Than Expected
With A Quiet Place Part II delayed until 2021, let's take a look at everything we know about John Krasinksi's highly-anticipated sequel.
This article is more than 2 years old
When A Quiet Place premiered in 2018, director, writer, and star of the movie John Krasinski felt he had a hit on his hands. He made the horror film for $17 million and it eventually went on to make over $340 million at the box office, leaving Paramount Pictures hopeful this could become a franchise. Now, Krasinski has directed A Quiet Place Part II, with talk of a third film in the series coming in the near future. So, what do we know about A Quiet Place Part II?
A Quiet Place Part II Release Date
Initially, A Quiet Place Part II was scheduled for release on May 15, 2020. Paramount decided to move the film up and gave it a new date of March 20, 2020. But on March 8, Paramount pulled it due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and not until April 2020 did Paramount gave it a new date of September 4, 2020. When July 2020 rolled around, Paramount pushed the film until April 23, 2021, over one full year from when it should have gone to the public. And then the movie was pushed yet again to September 17, 2021. In a surprise move, they have now moved the date to much sooner. A Quiet Place Part II is set to release on May 28, 2021 in theaters.
The theatrical release will have a shortened 45-day window. After that, the movie will be available for streaming on Paramount+ sometime in July, 2021.
Yet even with all these date changes A Quiet Place Part II already had its premiere. The movie held its premiere on March 8, 2020, at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center in New York. After the premiere, John Krasinski was gushing over Emily Blunt, her performance, and how well they work together. He told Entertainment Tonight, “She is without a doubt the most tremendous actress of our time in my opinion. She is the most incredible partner in writing and directing and set designs. She just has such good ideas,” he said. “So I actually felt like I had my partner in all things on set, not just the best actress in the world.”
Sequel Apprehension
In the mind of John Krasinski, A Quiet Place Part II was not a given. In fact, the actor-turned-director wanted no part of a sequel. He described the first film as a “love letter” to his children, but the actor fully explained himself on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “It was one of those things where I wasn’t really going to do a second one because the first one was such a personal experience — it was my love letter to my kids, which looks insane now that you’re watching that. But it was really important for me to continue the metaphor and we actually start dealing with how this all started.”
But it wasn’t only John Krasinski who needed convincing about A Quiet Place Part II. “We were both really reluctant and unnerved at the idea of trying to do another one,” said Emily Blunt, Krasinski’s real-life wife. She starred in A Quiet Place, also as Krasinski’s wife. “A lot of people came into the studio and tried to pitch ideas and we were both like, ‘We’re not going to do it.’” Krasinski continued, “I totally understood why the studio wanted to do a sequel for financial reasons. I didn’t want anything to do with it because, weirdly, as much as I’m the writer-director, I’m also a huge fan of this movie. I didn’t want to be a part of anything that would be viewed as a cash grab,” he said via Entertainment Weekly.
So what changed for John Krasinski and Emily Blunt? The studio asked Krasinski if he’d at least write an outline for A Quiet Place Part II. “I had this small idea, which was to make Millie [Millicent Simmonds] the lead of the movie,” Krasinski said. “Not only did I think she would give an amazing performance, which I knew she could do, her character opens the door to all the themes I was dealing with in the first movie.”
Even though John Krasinski began to see the light of day with a potential A Quiet Place Part II, Emily Blunt took a bit more convincing. “He pitched me the opening, and I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ [It was] undeniably great, and I realized I would have been an idiot not to want to be in that opening sequence,” Blunt told Variety. “We had to surrender to the idea that we wanted to do it and lose our snobbery.” Blunt continued, “You shouldn’t think of it as being comparative,” Blunt said. “You’d want it to match and be loyal to the tone of it. Our world expands and gets bigger, but it has the same intense muscularity of the first one.”
New and Returning Survivors
From everything John Krasinski has mentioned, A Quiet Place Part II will now focus on the kids, which means both Millicent Simmonds, who is deaf in real life and played John Krasinski and Emily Blunt’s daughter, Regan Abbott, and Noah Jupe will also be returning as their son, Marcus Abbott. Despite dying in the first film, John Krasinski will also reprise his role as father Lee Abbott in A Quiet Place Part II. Krasinski will appear in flashback scenes, in addition to returning as writer and director.
While the first film was contained to the Abbott family and their farmhouse, A Quiet Place Part II is going to have to step out of that scenario based on the ending of the first film. As the Abbott’s move on from their burned-down farmhouse, they will come across other survivors. Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, The Dark Knight) plays one of the new characters in the sequel, a survivor named Emmett. Djimon Hounsou (Amistad, Shazam!) will also be joining the cast for this second venture
The Plot
The plot for A Quiet Place Part II has been a carefully guarded secret. The story picks up pretty much right after the first one ends, as Emily Blunt’s Evelyn now has to step outside the safety of the farmhouse, since it burned down at the end of the first film. Evelyn now has to take care of her two eldest kids, Regan and Marcus, and her newborn baby on her own. The family has to learn how to survive in this scary world of alien creatures – who attack by sound and kill without pause. It’s also unclear that with other survivors out in the world, there may bigger dangers to worry about than the alien invaders.
A Quiet Place Part III?
With all the delays and the fact that we still have six more months before we can see A Quiet Place Part II, a third film may not be far behind. It was recently announced that Loving and Mud director Jeff Nichols has been hired to write and direct a third A Quiet Place movie, this one also based on an idea by John Krasinski.
For now, though, John Krasinski is simply concentrating on getting the sequel to fans. If you listen to Krasinski, A Quiet Place Part II looks to be just as personal to him as the first. “If the first movie is from the parents to the kids, this is the love letter from the kids to the parents,” Krasinski told Variety. “It’s a letter of dreams and hopes. I hope [my children are] this brave, and I hope they’re this courageous, and I hope they’re the ones that, when time gets dark, they’re cool enough to light the candle.”
Check out the trailer for A Quiet Place Part II below.
