Diablo Cody is ready to return to the world of “Jennifer’s Body.”
The “Lisa Frankenstein” and Oscar-winning “Juno” screenwriter revealed to Bloody Disgusting that she is in the process of trying to greenlight a sequel to the 2009 film that starred Megan Fox as a popular high schooler who unwillingly becomes possessed by a sex-hungry demon after a Satanic ritual goes wrong. Amanda Seyfried stars as Jennifer’s (Fox) meek best friend who confronts Jennifer’s selfish reign of terror. The film was directed by Karyn Kusama.
“Yes! I want to do a sequel. I am not done with ‘Jennifer’s Body,’” Cody said. “I just need to find…I need to partner with people who believe it in [sic] as much as I do and that hasn’t really happened yet. I need someone to believe in it who has a billion dollars.”
Cody recalled how she was at first “humiliated” when “Jennifer’s Body” was released. The film barely broke even at the box office and was written off due to a “sexist” marketing campaign, as director Kusama previously explained. Now, screenwriter Cody is embracing the cult legacy of “Jennifer’s Body” 15 years later.
“At first I just thought, oh where was this audience when I needed it and then I realized they were like…seven,” Cody said. “And then some people who maybe didn’t appreciate it at the time have come around and now I’m just like, there’s no saltiness, now I’m just happy.”
She added, “I mean it’s gotten progressively happier for me. At first I was like, I was excited about it obviously, but I was also a little bit salty because I remember thinking, well where was this audience when the movie came out. It was a critical, commercial failure. I was pretty humiliated to be perfectly honest with you. It was a rough experience having that movie come out. It was rough for me, it was rough for Megan [Fox]… [then] people started suddenly talking about it like it was a good movie, which I had thought all along.”
Up next, Cody teased that she has an unfinished script that is “definitely the most straight horror, like, overt, gore, scary thing I’ve ever written.”
Cody formerly told Buzzfeed in 2018 that “Jennifer’s Body” was written specifically for “girls,” saying, “If a guy wrote a movie with the line ‘hell is a teenage girl,’ I would reject that. But I’m allowed to say it because I was one. I think the fact that we were a female creative team gave us permission to make observations about some of the more toxic aspects of female friendship.”
“Jennifer’s Body” was revisited for a charity table read as part of Film Independent’s Live Read Series in 2023, with Rachel Sennott acting as Fox’s Jennifer and Ella Purnell as Seyfried’s character Needy. Cody said onstage that “nothing makes me happier than when a person approaches me and tells me that they love this movie.”
