Bird Box made a quick nest for itself in the pop culture zeitgeist, and viewers are wondering
if they'll see any more from that world.
Netflix hasn't announced any plans to produce a sequel to its record-breaking hit, but that
doesn't mean we won't see a follow-up at some point.
Here's everything we know about a possible Bird Box sequel.
Netflix proudly touted Bird Box as an instant success, proclaiming that it had been watched
by more than 45 million accounts in its first week of release — the best opening ever
for the streaming service.
Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos previously compared the 20 million streams
for The Christmas Chronicles to a $200 million movie opening.
By that metric, Bird Box netting more than double those views would easily make it one
of the biggest movies of 2018.
The accuracy of the analogy can be debated, but even if Netflix is exaggerating the numbers,
the movie still seems like a staggering success.
And in Hollywood, success usually brings sequels.
Such was the case with Bright, the fantasy buddy-cop movie starring Will Smith and Joel
Edgerton.
After a strong opening on the platform with 11 million reported streams in its first three
days, Netflix made the decision to go ahead with a sequel.
It's also a movie that had a far larger production budget than Bird Box — $90 million compared
to $19.8 million.
For the moment, Netflix has said that there are no plans to make Bird Box 2, but that
doesn't mean the idea has been totally ruled out.
After fans clamored for a follow-up to the teen rom-com To All the Boys I've Loved Before,
the company announced a second film.
Of course, the situation is a little different with that movie, which is based on the first
book of a trilogy by Jenny Han.
In other words, there's source material out there for a second To All The Boys feature.
That's not the case with Bird Box.
"The only thing that will happen soon, is we're all gonna die soon."
Bird Box is based on the Josh Malerman novel of the same name, though screenwriter Eric
Heisserer and director Susanne Bier did make some changes to suit the film.
Most of the characters in the movie either aren't in the book, or have been altered from
the book, but the most notable change to how the story actually feels is the ending, which
Heisserer purposely altered to make more hopeful.
But despite these changes, neither version of the story wraps up with an obvious sequel
hook.
One approach producers could take is to look at another Malerman novel, Black Mad Wheel,
for a similar glimpse into a world where people's senses start betraying them.
In that book, a group of musicians is sent to an African desert to determine the source
of a sound that's wreaking havoc on the population.
Perhaps this phenomenon could be tied in with the monsters from Bird Box, which cause insanity
on sight.
Of course, there's no rule saying that there has to be source material to continue a franchise.
Game of Thrones has famously surpassed George R.R. Martin's original Song of Ice and Fire
novels in its final seasons, with the author giving the show's producers permission to
guide the story how they see fit.
Netflix could try for a similar arrangement with Malerman.
The point is, they don't need source material to keep the story spinning — especially
considering how much the movie already deviated from the book.
Not long after Bird Box was crowned a success, People magazine asked Susanne Bier if she'd
be interested in directing a sequel.
Bier was non-committal, saying, quote, "we only just finished it," encouraging fans to
thoroughly enjoy the first movie before clamoring for another.
But she was also clearly happy with the movie's reception, and that kind of popular acclaim
might be just the thing to inspire the filmmaker to explore a second go-around.
It's easy to see why a project like Bird Box would attract a talent like Bier.
The award-winning director has a long résumé of films that focus on families in times of
crisis, most notably 2010's Oscar-winning In a Better World.
Bird Box features plenty of the same themes, but with a sci-fi twist.
Bier also seems to be interested in exploring themes of motherhood.
In late 2018, she signed on to direct HBO's limited series The Undoing, in which Big Little
Lies star Nicole Kidman plays a woman left to rebuild a life with her young son after
a series of devastating revelations about her husband.
With that kind of work under her belt, there's little surprise that Bier would be attracted
to telling the story of Malorie, raising the kids she never wanted.
It was also the director's first attempt at a horror film.
While she has no sequels in her filmography now, a follow-up to Bird Box could involve
a deeper exploration of the themes the first movie introduced, possibly being enough to
interest Bier and her collaborators in another trip down the river.
It was a classic end-of-the-world love story.
Boy meets girl.
Girl hates boy.
Before too long, boy and girl end up getting to know one another on top of a washing machine.
It could be the start of something beautiful — but how does it end?
The last time we saw Felix and Lucy, they were sneaking into the garage to steal the
recently-deceased Greg's car and leaving the rest of the housemates stranded.
When asked about it by People, Susanne Bier left the couple's destination up to the imagination,
saying
"I actually think it's quite exciting that we don't know exactly where they went."
Rosa Salazar, who played Lucy in the movie, has her own idea of what happens next for
the duo.
She told the Los Angeles Times that she imagines the pair surviving and realizing that leaving
the house was the best possible outcome.
Salazar described her sequel as a combination of True Romance and Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas, with both characters evading death thanks to their indulging in the temporary
insanity of drugs and alcohol.
The idea of the two young lovers speeding down the highway like a psychedelic Bonnie
and Clyde has some appeal to it.
Yet it begs the question of what happens when they run out of gas?
Or worse yet… out of drugs?
If the film makers decide to take the franchise in an edgier direction, they might want to
give Salazar a call.
Bird Box has drawn comparisons to A Quiet Place, with both movies being thrillers about
families trying to evade monsters that kill by taking advantage of one of the senses.
Unlike A Quiet Place, Bird Box never shows the creatures, but that wasn't necessarily
by design.
Sandra Bullock admitted that she filmed a scene with one of the creatures, but it was
eventually scrapped — probably for the best, since the original design for the monsters
mostly made her laugh.
That didn't stop fans from wondering what the monsters looked like.
In place of actually seeing a visualization of the monster, the final version of the movie
has a scene in which the monster-allied Gary sketches a series of disturbing images, supposedly
based on what the monsters looked like to him.
It was good enough for one movie, but there's really only so long that you can leave the
bad guys off-screen while maintaining suspense.
Any sequel would have to give audiences at least a glimpse of what's causing all the
horror.
If the filmmakers decide to stick with the current look, they'll have to figure out a
way to make the creatures a lot less laughable.
"...making the end of the world great again!
Yooooooo."
We know what the Bird Box monsters do to people, but we don't know much beyond that.
In the movie, Lil Rel Howery's character Charlie has his own theory on what the monsters are,
likening them to the demons that live in the mythology of every civilization's spiritual
traditions.
"All different names for the same thing."
"And what's that?"
"The end of us."
In real life, the credit for that goes to Heisserer, who came up with the idea on his
own.
In Malerman's original book, the author never gave his bad guys a backstory.
Instead, the screenwriter dug into various legends and folklore to create a plausible
origin for the monsters.
It's another way in which Bird Box differs from A Quiet Place.
John Krasinski says he created an entire history for his monsters in order to better understand
them.
Bird Box, on the other hand, isn't really concerned with the nature of the hostile invaders,
though Heisserer has admitted that he drew some inspiration from the mysterious aliens
in his 2016 movie Arrival.
That still doesn't fully answer the question of whether Bird Box's monsters are aliens,
spirits, or something even stranger.
Did these creatures arrive on Earth from somewhere else, or have they always been here?
If so, what woke them up?
The characters speculate that before you go crazy and commit suicide, you see images of
something from your past that's believed to involve a deep sense of loss or intense sadness.
Lydia wonders if she sees her dead parents just moments before taking a seat behind the
steering wheel of a burning car.
Malorie was unsuccessfully tempted by Tom's disembodied voice to take off her blindfold,
and we're still wondering what made the tracksuit-wearing woman in the hospital want to start smashing
her head into a glass window.
We may never find out what the brain-scrambling final images really are, because very few
people are left alive to talk about it.
The ones that do live through their encounters with the monsters don't seem all that reliable,
turning into homicidal maniacs wanting to share their ideas of something "beautiful."
Considering the varied responses, it's hard to imagine that everyone's seeing the same
thing — one person's beauty could be another person's nightmare.
We're still trying to figure out what could be so beautiful as to inspire a new mother
to take a running header out of a second-floor window.
Americans like to think of themselves as a can-do bunch, which could explain how a plucky
bunch from Northern California figured out how to evade certain death from an unseen
menace.
But the movie establishes that the arrival of the monsters is a spreading, global phenomenon,
suggesting that there may be many other groups around the world who have figured out some
way to stay alive in the face of a mass calamity.
When the movie opens, we learn that the panic has hit Europe and is spreading quickly.
But we also never see the solutions other people around the world come up with.
Since the film has already taken liberties with the source material, it wouldn't be a
stretch for the filmmakers to examine the panic from another part of the world to see
how diverse groups of people are coping.
If a sequel wanted to stay a little closer to home, a potential storyline could follow
the residents of the Janet Tucker School for the Blind.
While the students weren't in any danger of being driven to suicide, they almost certainly
came into contact with people who were afflicted.
How long did it take them to understand what was happening and why they weren't stricken
with madness?
It would also be interesting to discover how the school became a haven for refugees seeking
shelter.
Now that Malorie and the kids have made it to the safety of the compound, they're all
ready to start new lives.
Yet we have no clue what those lives will be like.
From all appearances, the people sheltered inside the School for the Blind are leading
happy, productive lives, but it's hard to believe that it will be peace and harmony
forever.
More people are likely to come looking for help.
There's also the chance that the deranged will come looking to create chaos.
And there are still unseen horrors looking to do damage outside the walls.
A potential sequel could see Tom and Olympia becoming acclimated to their new society,
and also show the school training its residents to survive in the outside world.
If the people inside gain enough knowledge of what the creatures actually are, they could
come up with a plan to eventually defeat them.
Or the kids could simply choose to live out their days in tranquility, building relationships
with the people they meet in their new living situation.
It'd be a happy ending, even if it might not be the most exciting sequel.
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