Academy Award winner Jordan Peele (that feels so good to write, folks) signed a first-look deal with Universal last year, under his Monkeypaw Productions banner. It’s hardly surprising: his debut feature Get Out grossed over $225 million worldwide off a tiny budget, scoring a raft of Oscar nominations in the process. Today, Peele announced the first title to come out of that deal: a “new nightmare” simply (and forebodingly?) entitled Us.
— Jordan Peele (@JordanPeele) May 9, 2018
No plot information is available regarding Us, other than that it will be “tonally similar” to Get Out, while addressing “something different than race.” Written and directed by Peele, it will also have a budget five times bigger than Get Out, placing it around the $25 million mark. Judging exclusively by its title, it's likely to cut as close to the bone for modern society as Get Out did.
But we do know, thanks to the Hollywood Reporter, that three key members of its cast are “in various stages of talks” to star. Those members: Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale, Mad Men, Top of the Lake), Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o (Black Panther, 12 Years A Slave, Star Wars), and Winston Duke (Black Panther’s M’Baku, a breakout character if ever there was one). Hell of a core cast there.
Us is just one of several projects Peele has on the boil. He’s also involved, to various degrees, in a racially-charged horror anthology entitled Lovecraft Country; Spike Lee’s Cannes-bound BlacKkKlansman; a reboot of The Twilight Zone; a project entitled The Hunt, about 1970s Nazi hunters; Henry Selick’s animated feature Wendell and Wild; and a docudrama about Lorena Bobbitt.
We have no idea when those other projects will come to fruition, but Us will shoot this year, hitting theatres March 15th, 2019 - less than a year away. Get pumped.