Taika Waititi Still Plans to Make a ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Sequel

Taika Waititi is having what can only be described as the best year ever. Not only did his delightful comedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople set a box office record in his native New Zealand, the filmmaker is also hard at work on Thor: Ragnarok and one of the co-writers for Disney’s much-anticipated upcoming release Moana. In the middle of all this, Waititi and Thor actor Chris Hemsworth found time to shoot Civil War: Team Thor, perhaps the best thing to happen to the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Robert Downey, Jr.

And thankfully for fans of his 2015 breakout hit What We Do in the Shadows, it sounds like Waititi has not shelved plans to make a sequel to his popular vampire mockumentary. The next movie  —  which Waititi had previously announced would be called We’re Wolves and focus on the werewolf support group from the first film  —  is still on the back burner for Waititi and writing partner Jemaine Clement As the director told IGN (via /Film), it’s just a matter of letting the process unfold.

It’s still in the works. But the Jemaine [Clement] and Taika works is a very long and slow machine — we put an idea in one end, and it takes about six years to come out the other end. And sometimes it doesn’t even come out. And sometimes it comes out as a different idea. So we’ve out the idea of We’re Wolves into the machine, and it’s now slowly going through the sausage maker. So in a couple of years I think it will come out as a script and we’ll shoot that. Or maybe it will just come out as some t-shirts.

Waititi has built his reputation as something of a Hollywood outsider, just as likely to work on a coming-of-age film about an orphan as he is to shoot one of the most highly anticipated superhero movies of all time. While it’s important that Waititi continue to make movies that interest him personally, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping he’d find time to keep making New Zealand comedies every now and then. Waititi has a knack of finding gentle humor in some of the most mundane environments; my fingers are crossed that he becomes one of those filmmakers who moves effortlessly between budgets both big and small.