I can’t say I saw this one coming. Almost twenty years after the release of 1408, Variety reports that John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson are returning for a sequel to the 2007 supernatural horror film. Natalia Dyer (Stranger Things) and Elijah Wood (Yellowjackets) will be joining them, and Mikael Håfström, who directed the first movie, is coming back as well.
1408 Sequel
The original film was based on Stephen King’s short story of the same name. Cusack played author Michael Enslin, who, as part of his new book on haunted hotels, investigates the legends of mysterious and violent deaths in room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel in New York City. Jackson played Gerald Olin, the manager of the Dolphin Hotel.
Cusack and Jackson will be playing their original roles, but Variety says they will be secondary characters this time around. Dyer will be starring, with Wood playing a supporting role. Plot details for the sequel are being kept under wraps.
Håfström will direct the sequel from a script he co-wrote with Mark Verheiden. Production is slated to kick off in early 2027.
Cusack Wanted a Sequel
1408 was a critical and commercial success upon its release, grossing over $133 million against a budget of just $25 million, and Cusack has previously said it’s the only film of his he’d ever want to do a sequel for.
“I was lucky that I never had the desire, or no one asked me to do any sequels,” Cusack told People last year. “There’s one that I think would be interesting to do, which would be ‘1408.’ Just because … I think today, you know, most movies suck.“
It seems he’s going to get his chance.
Multiple Endings
The original film had multiple alternate endings, but Håfström has always maintained that the original theatrical ending is the strongest, and that the others were just shot later as experiments.
“We can debunk [the ending was changed due to test screenings]. We shot the film, and we shot it with the ending that ended up being the theatrical ending,” he told The Kingcast. “While we were doing it in post, we were doing some additional photography, and I remember talking to Bob Weinstein at the time, and we said, ‘Maybe, for fun, we can experiment and do an alternative ending to see how that does.’ I don’t know all the details now, but it was not that it didn’t test well, that ending. It had nothing to do with that.“
What do you think of 1408 getting a sequel all these years later?
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