I admit, I never thought that Hammer Films, the classic British horror studio of yore, could ever be resurrected, but never count out the magic of Harry Potter.
With Daniel Radcliffe in the lead of Woman in Black, Hammer had their biggest box office success ever, and the company is indeed back in a big way.
The Woman in Black is also a big step forward for the British horror studio, which has a terrific tradition with Hammer and Clive Barker, yet was recently been in need of a boost. (In fact, The Woman in Black is reportedly the biggest money making British horror film of the last twenty years).
For those uninitiated in the world of classic horror, Hammer was the British studio that made its own counterparts to the Universal greats like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy.
Just as the Universal horrors made stars out of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, Hammer had its own stars like Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and where the Hammer films were once considered the downfall of British culture, today they are very highly respected and revered works of art. (Tim Burton and Martin Scorsese are both major Hammer fans).
So now that Woman in Black has made $120 million around the world, and brought Hammer back from the dead, there’s of course going to be a sequel. As Collider reports, the sequel will be dubbed The Woman In Black: Angels of Death.
Daniel Radcliffe probably won’t be back for the sequel, which takes place forty years after the first film. However Susan Hill, who penned the novel The Woman in Black, wrote the original story the sequel will be based on.
As Collider points out, and I applaud this as well, it’s good to see a horror movie without tons of gore and gimmicks doing a brisk business, not to mention that The Woman in Black is an original horror story not based on a previous movie, TV show, comic book, etc. Here’s hoping the sequel can keep the spirit of original horror, and classic British horror, alive and well.
