It was literally less than a week ago that Emma Stone was confirmed to have signed on the dotted line to reprise her scenery-chewing and showstopping turn as the titular Disney villain in a Cruella sequel, but a new rumor claims that the Academy Award winner is already circling a deal for a trilogy-closing chapter.
That’s about the extent of the information made available, so it’s unclear whether it’s an entirely different set of negotiations or Cruella 3 factored into Stone’s contract for the second installment, but one thing we do know for sure is that the star and executive producer is set for a significant bump in pay after reportedly leveraging Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow lawsuit to her advantage when she sat down to hammer things out with the Mouse House.
For a long time, Disney didn’t show much interest in sequelizing or franchising the production line of live-action remakes, with the exception of Jon Favreau’s Jungle Book being announced for another outing that swiftly vanished into the ether of development hell, never to be heard from again.
Johnny Depp may have returned for Alice Through the Looking Glass and Angelina Jolie headlined Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, but those were two exceptions to the rule that significantly under-performed at the box office compared to their predecessors. However, something has clearly changed now that Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin follow up and Barry Jenkins’ sequel to Favreau’s The Lion King are both in development alongside Cruella 2.
An episodic Beauty and the Beast spinoff for Disney Plus has finally gained some momentum, too, so it’s all systems go for the remake empire to continue expanding at a rapid rate.
