Sam Raimi Has ‘New Hope’ For “Crawl 2”

One of the best genre films of 2019, the Alexandre Aja-directed and Sam Raimi-produced alligators in a basement film “Crawl” became a critical and commercial success, pulling in $91 million worldwide from a $14 million budget, along with quite positive reviews.

It took a while, but in August 2024 a sequel was given the go ahead by Paramount Pictures with Aja set to return as director, from a script co-written by Andrew Deutschman and Jason Pagan. The plan was to move the setting to New York City.

In the year and a half since, there’s been no real update on the film, along with concerns that Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount may have scuttled those plans.

Out promoting his recent film “Send Help,” Raimi tells The Wrap he’s still hopeful the project is still alive and the studio will commit to making it:

“We’ve been trying to get a go from the studio, and they changed hands, Paramount Pictures did, and now the new group that’s come in I’ve worked with before, the ladies and gentlemen that are great at development, and they’re interested in ‘Crawl 2.’ That’s all I could really say right now, is now I’ve got a new hope to make it.

It’s a little bit, I think, embarrassing to make an alligator in the basement picture. I don’t know if that’s what their lofty ambitions were, but I think there’s a crowd that loves those kinds of films, if they’re well-made and honestly trying to make this suspenseful and scary and get to know the characters, if they’re really trying to do that, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Yes, it’s a B movie, but it’s a blast. I really like that kind of picture.”

Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper starred in the original, in which a Category 5 hurricane causes mass flooding in Florida. This leads to a father and daughter’s home being overrun by giant man-eating alligators.

Earlier this month, Aja signed on to helm the sequel to the French shark creature feature “Under Paris”.