Just about ten years later, horror breakout It Follows is finally getting a sequel: They Follow.
Distributor Neon announced the news on Monday, also confirming that It Follows writer/director David Robert Mitchell and star Maika Monroe will both be returning. There’s no release date yet, but principal photography on They Follow will begin in 2024.
It Follows was released back in 2014 and quickly became a critical and commercial hit, making $21 million worldwide (per Box Office Mojo) on a reported budget of around $1 million. Details surrounding the plot of They Follow are scarce, other than the fact that Monroe will be reprising the role of Jay Height.
It Follows focused on Jay, who is stalked by a mysterious entity after having sex with her boyfriend. After learning that the malicious presence following her is transferred by sex, she faces the difficult decision of dealing with it for the rest of her life or finding it a new victim.
Its unique premise and its slow-building tension made it a modern horror favorite, with IGN calling it in our review a “hauntingly original and genuinely unsettling take on familiar spooky elements.”
It follows marked a major breakout for Monroe, who’s since appeared in movies like Independence Day: Resurgence and Honey Boy. Mitchell, meanwhile, last directed the 2018 mystery Under the Silver Lake, starring Andrew Garfield.
The news comes as horror continues to be a reliable, high-profit draw at the box office, with Five Nights at Freddy’s breaking records this past weekend. Other horror sequels, like those for Talk to Me and more recently The Black Phone, have also been announced over the past couple months.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she's not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
