Fans of Upgrade you are finally getting your sequel, albeit, on the small screen. It has been announced that Blumhouse Productions is developing a TV series follow-up of the 2018 cult hit.
The series is co-created and executive produced by Leigh Whannell, who directed the film, and Tim Walsh (Treadstone) who serves as showrunner. Whannell, coming off writing and directing Blumhouse’s The Invisible Man, is also going to direct the series. The writer’s room for the show has recently just opened and also includes Krystal Ziv Houghton and James Roland, who ran the second season of Blumhouse TV’s, The Purge.
The Upgrade sequel picks up a few years after the events of the film and broadens the universe with an evolved version of STEM and a new host – imagining a world in which the government repurposes STEM to help curb criminal activity. The movie wasn’t a huge success but it was successful in terms of budget to gross ($5 million budget, $16.5 million global gross) & it was well-received by critics, earning an 88% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film has gone on to establish a sizeable cult following.
In the film, written and directed by Whannell, starred Logan Marshall-Green as Grey Trace who ends up in tragedy when his wife is killed during a brutal mugging that leaves him paralyzed. He is approached by a billionaire inventor with an experimental cure in the form of a computer chip implant called STEM, which provides him with heightened physical abilities. These new skills allow Grey to exact revenge on those responsible for his wife’s death.
