When you’ve spent the better part of a year communicating with friends and family only through Zoom calls, movies that capture the “Screenlife” experience hardly feel special. It’s funny, the genre was having quite the boom before the whole pandemic lockdown happened, and probably the shining jewel of them all was Aneesh Chaganty’s thriller, Searching, which starred John Cho as a father searching for his missing daughter using his computer and other online resources.
A sequel to Searching has been in the works for a while, and while we knew Cho wouldn’t be returning, it’s only now that we’re learning who the directors will be and details on the story. Turns out it will be the original film’s editors, Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, who will take over directing the film. Chaganty sticks around as a producer, joined by Sev Ohanian and Natalie Qasabian, Adam Sidman and Timur Bekmambetov. It’s Bekmambetov who has really taken to the “Screenlife” format through his pair of Unfriended horror films.
Without Cho, it was clear that a new story was in the works. The sequel is being described as “an evolved Screenlife thriller format where the story plays out on the screens of the characters’ devices.” Ohanian and Chaganty came up with the story, which Merrick and Johnson will also write.
Chaganty told Deadline, “With such restrictive visual parameters, a movie like ‘Searching 2‘ requires a fresh visual style to separate it from the original. I’ve contributed what I can to this growing sub-genre. But if there’s anyone on the planet with the potential to take it even further, it’s Nick and Will, who were there from the beginning.”