‘Get Out’ Semi-Sequels: Jordan Peele To Explore Taboos In More ‘Social Thrillers’

Get Out director Jordan Peele is not content to stop at just one boundary-pushing and subversive “social thriller” that shines light on generally-avoided film topics. Get Out started the ball rolling and was a national sensation, and now Peele wants to create four more similarly subversive films over the next decade. To start, The Hollywood Reporter announced yesterday, Peele has signed a contract with Universal to create yet another film in the same non-traditional vein, a genre dubbed the “social thriller.”

“Through extraordinary imagination and fearless humor,” said Universal chairman Donna Langley, “Jordan has proven himself to be a game-changer who is driven to tell stories that are as commercially entertaining as they are disruptive and provocative. The entire Universal family takes great pride in his incomparable filmmaking debut, and feel fortunate that this studio will be Jordan’s home for many years to come.”

Basically, the studio is enamored with the way Peele used Get Out to examine what is an extremely hot-button issue in America’s current social landscape and take a uniquely thrilling look at it that really got people talking. Get Out is so fresh and different than other cinema fare that it is almost as if Peele created a new sub-genre. It is being referred to as a “social thriller.”

Peele himself is just as excited as Universal at the idea of continuing his subversive directorial career.

“I am thrilled to continue the work we started together on Get Out — pushing the boundaries of storytelling,” he says.

Apparently, Peele wants to produce more stories “with the aim of giving a voice and opportunities to those traditionally under-represented in front and behind the camera, be it gender, race or sexual orientation.”

That’s fantastic news for anyone who loved the dialogues started by Get Out, as it means many more topics concerning repressed aspects of today’s society will be explored. Hopefully, the conversations resulting from those explorations will be just as deep.

Although the constructive social impact of Get Out is undeniable, the biggest reason Universal wants to work with Peele — and drastically increase the amount of funding he has to work with on the new film — is money. The budget for Get Out was $5 million dollars, a decent amount for Blumhouse, the low-budget film studio Jordan worked on during the making of the flick. Get Out pulled in a box office of $194 million, nearly twenty times its budget. Universal is a bit bigger than Blumhouse and is allocating $25 million for Peele’s new project. Not exactly Blockbuster-level sums of cash, but certainly nothing to scoff at. If Peele can put that extra money to good use like he did in Get Out, he could quickly become one of Hollywood’s highest-grossing directors.

Of course, a higher budget does not necessarily equate to a better movie. Part of what made Get Out so incredibly effective was how gritty and real it was, and you don’t need tens of millions of dollars to recreate that. Still, though, some top-tier acting and editing might help add to that feel even further.

Peele’s plans for his post-Get Out social thrillers extend even beyond the single film he plans to make with Universal. He hopes to return to Blumhouse at some point and make some more low-budget movies to prolong his impact.

In fact, Peele tells Business Insider, he has already planned four more of these social thrillers in the vein of Get Out and has plans to release them over the next 10 years.

Jordan Peele tells us about getting to make his favourite film that didn’t exist: GET OUT #GetOut: https://t.co/YJAdRhko23 pic.twitter.com/PAI7xFKC7o

— SBS Movies (@SBSMovies) April 23, 2017

“The best and scariest monsters in the world are human beings and what we are capable of, especially when we get together,” Peele says.

“I’ve been working on these premises about these different social demons, these innately human monsters that are woven into the fabric of how we think and how we interact, and each one of my movies is going to be about a different one of these social demons.”

By partnering with huge movie studios like Universal in the wake of Get Out, Peele is really upping his credibility, which will, in turn, help him make his social thriller ambitions a reality.

[Featured Image by Rich Fury/Invision/AP Images]