A ‘Buddy’ Sequel? Casper Kelly Has Ideas for Bobby and Benny’s World!
By Dread Central
3 min readBack in September, when I first wrote about the possibility of a Buddy sequel, Casper Kelly had already said he […]
Back in September, when I first wrote about the possibility of a Buddy sequel, Casper Kelly had already said he […]
Buddy was the surprise indie hit of the year for me. It pulled a Terrifier 2, quietly adding theaters and making more money in its second weekend than it did in its first. When I wrote that sequel story, I thought it had a real shot at $10 million. It’s now made nearly $27 million domestically. With that kind of run, I’d be surprised if we didn’t get another one.
It’s such a weird, fun hook. A Barney-like unicorn is hunting down the kids on his own TV show because he needs to finish the episode. You’ve got the audience that grew up on Barney & Friends, the creepy, half-familiar TV sets that tap into Gen Z’s love of liminal horror, and viral videos of Buddy getting kicked out of Halloween Horror Nights. Josh Korngut put it pretty well in his Sundance review: “Imperfect, yes, but films like Buddy don’t come along very often, and filmmakers like Casper Kelly are even rarer.”
As for how much Kelly should listen to the fans? Hear them out, then make your movie. I’ve seen filmmakers try to make fans happy with Resident Evil and Hatchet, only to find the fans are still pissed off and now the filmmakers resent them for it. Sonic the Hedgehog is one where the fans were right. They hated the way Sonic looked, the filmmakers fixed him, and they got a franchise out of it. But everybody could point to the same thing on that screen. That’s a pretty specific fix. How do you do that with a mural that has people imagining a dozen different movies?
Casper made Too Many Cooks, the greatest viral video of all time, and “Fun Size,” one of the craziest segments we’ve ever done in V/H/S/Halloween. I want to see what that guy thinks is going on with Bobby and Benny. Casper, do your thing.
