With 'Candyman,' Nia DaCosta becomes the first Black female director to debut a film at No. 1 - The Washington Post

The new “Candyman” opened at the top of the domestic box office this past weekend, making Nia DaCosta the first Black female filmmaker to have a movie debut in the No. 1 slot.

Distributed by Universal Pictures and MGM, “Candyman” is a sequel to the 1992 horror flick of the same name and stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in the lead role. It was projected to earn $15 million in ticket sales, according to Variety, but wound up raking in roughly $22 million in its first three days.

The film was delayed by more than a year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and premiered amid concerns of the delta variant’s impact on moviegoing. Peer studios Warner Bros. and Disney have responded to the evolving situation by releasing some titles simultaneously on streaming platforms, but Universal and MGM stuck to their plan for “Candyman” to premiere exclusively in theaters.

The film has received relatively positive reviews, though some writers have critiqued how, per Rolling Stone’s K. Austin Collins, “it overreaches, most prominently for relevance, to the point of raising questions about whether the movie understands its own, initially provocative, questions.”

DaCosta co-wrote the screenplay with Win Rosenfeld and Jordan Peele, both producers on the project through Monkeypaw Productions. In response to the delayed release, she tweeted last year that “we wanted the horror and humanity of ‘Candyman’ to be experienced in a collective, a community.”

“We made ‘Candyman’ to be seen in theaters,” she wrote. “Not just for the spectacle but because the film is about community and stories — how they shape each other, how they shape us. It’s about the collective experience of trauma and joy, suffering and triumph, and the stories we tell around it.”

As IndieWire noted, a few other Black female directors have previously come close to debuting a film at the top of the weekend box office — including Ava DuVernay, whose fantasy adaptation “A Wrinkle in Time” premiered at No. 2 in March 2018 behind “Black Panther,” and Gina Prince-Bythewood, whose romantic comedy “Love and Basketball” debuted behind “U-571” in April 2000. (“A Wrinkle in Time” also made DuVernay the first Black woman to direct a film passing the $100 million box office mark.)

DaCosta’s next move will take her to the superhero realm, as she was hired to direct “The Marvels” — making her both the first Black woman and the youngest director to helm a Marvel film.

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