'Doctor Strange' director Scott Derrickson signs up for 'Labyrinth' sequel

Scott Derrickson, the director of Sinister and Doctor Strange, has signed up to direct a sequel to the 1986 fantasy film Labyrinth.

Deadline reports that Derrickson will direct the film for TriStar Pictures from a script by Maggie Levin.

Directed by Jim Henson from a screenplay by Monty Python’s Terry Jones, and executive produced by George Lucas, the original film starred a young Jennifer Connolly as a girl who finds herself transported to a magical world where she has to rescue her baby brother Toby from inside a huge maze when he is taken by goblins.

Read more: The baby from Labyrinth is now a puppet designer

Rock star David Bowie played Jareth, the Goblin King, and provided some music for the film. Most of the characters in the film, beyond Connelly, Bowie and the baby, were played by puppets.

Although not a huge box office hit (it was pulled from cinemas just three weeks after it was released) the film was generally well-received by critics, and has since gone on to be cult classic, earning a second wind on VHS and DVD.

Its strong home entertainment sales led to TriStar (a Sony Pictures company) developing a sequel in the early noughties with a placeholder title of Curse of the Goblin King. In 2016 Sony announced that it developing a sequel with a script from Nicola Perlman, whose writing credits include Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Marvel and Detective Pikachu, with Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe) attached to direct.

That version was said to be “not a remake nor a reboot but rather a continuation of the story set in the rich Henson universe.”

Bowie’s Goblin King was also not going to be “represented in the film.”

What route Derrickson and Levin’s incarnation will take remains to be seen. Derrickson recently departed Marvel Studios’ Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness citing ‘creative differences’.

He’s also developing an adaptation of Stephen King’s novella The Breathing Method.

Labyrinth is streaming on Netflix.