Murder Mystery arrived on Netflix in 2019 as one of those movies that didn’t exactly garner rave reviews but still managed to become the biggest Netflix movie released at the time. The Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston movie was quickly greenlit for a sequel, and new photos from the set of Murder Mystery 2 have shown the pair reuniting as the New York couple who, in the first film, found themselves framed for the murder of an elderly billionaire while on vacation in Europe. While Murder Mystery has been overtaken by several other high-profile movies on Netflix, the streamer will hope that Sandler and Aniston can work their magic again to make the sequel another record-breaker.
Earlier today, The Daily Mail published images taken on the set of the sequel, which is currently filming in Oahu, Hawaii. While the photos obviously have no bearing on the plot, it looks like their characters are taking another holiday break which is likely to head south very quickly, and not in the travel sense. The movie was announced in September last year as part of Netflix’s TUDUM event and was described very briefly as “another international adventure full of intrigue and hijinks.” You can see the images here.
The latest images from the set don’t exactly give away where the international location of the movie will be, if it is only one location. Still, there have been some suggestions that Hawaii could be doubling for India based on some of the costumes being worn by extras on the set. That, of course, is something that has yet to be confirmed by Netflix along with other details about the release, such as when it will premiere on the platform, which is likely to appear sometime in the fall.
Murder Mystery 2 Needs To Address The Issues Of The First Movie To Get Audiences On Side.
Murder Mystery only managed to pick up a critic approval rating of 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, and its audience response was not much better. However, the film landed on Netflix with viewership of 83 million accounts having watched at least two minutes of the movie in its first four weeks, making it the fifth most-watched Netflix original on the platform at the time. While the sequel needs to attempt to improve on its reception, there will be some who question why make the effort when there are clearly plenty of people still willing to watch.
Murder Mystery arrived on Netflix before the Covid pandemic, when many people were stuck at home with nothing to do but watch whatever was put in front of them, meaning that either the star power of Sandler and Aniston or some other reason pulled in viewers. This has become a bit of a trend recently both on Netflix and with many other streaming platforms, where movies that have either been cinematic bombs in the past, or badly reviewed new movies have been watched by millions of subscribers against all expectation. Recent Netflix mega-budget movie Red Notice, with the combined Hollywood might of Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, was a prime example, with mediocre reviews but huge watch numbers that have led to talk of two sequels shooting back to back.
Whether Murder Mystery 2 will continue this trend or manage to buck it is something we will have to wait to find out, but if it can manage to avoid reviews like The Hollywood Reporter’s comments on the original of “a tale as generic, and as dull, as its title,” then it will be a step in the right direction.