The first official images from Bring It On: Cheer or Die show a glimpse at the entirely unique sequel. The Bring It On franchise began in 2000 with Peyton Reed's classic high school cheerleading comedy starring Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Jesse Bradford, and Gabrielle Union. The film, which follows a cheerleading captain who invites an outsider to the team and discovers that their routines are stolen from a school across town, was an enormous success, making $90 million off an $11 million budget. That film spawned five direct-to-video sequels following various cheerleading teams, with the most recent being 2017's Bring It On: Worldwide Cheersmack. The franchise also expanded into a short-lived Broadway musical with music by future Hamilton and Encanto icon Lin-Manuel Miranda.
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While it's not surprising that Bring It On will be getting another sequel this year, what is surprising is that it will be a full-on horror film, specifically a slasher. The project, which was directed by Karen Lam (SyFy's Van Helsing) from a screenplay by Dana Schwartz (She-Hulk) and Rebekah McKendry (Glorious), currently does not have an official release date, but it has been confirmed that it will premiere on the SyFy Network at some point this fall. The cast of the film includes Kerri Medders (Panic), Tiera Skovbye (Riverdale), and Missi Pyle, whose most recent entry in the horror genre was the 2019 Octavia Spencer thriller Ma.
Today, Bloody Disgusting shared a whole crop of first-look images from Bring It On: Cheer or Die. In addition to showing off the moves of the cheerleading squads The Diablos and The Knights, the images are interspersed with some darker moments that hint at what's to come when one of the teams decides to host practice on Halloween in an abandoned school, and their members are picked off by an unknown assailant. The image also shows a glimpse at Pyle's character, who is most likely a school administrator. Check out the gallery of full-size images below:
7 Images
So far, the images are more focused on the characters and their cheer routines than the macabre incidents that are about to befall them. That may worry some horror fans, who would like the movie to be as bloody and creepy as is possible on television. However, SyFy has had some success recently with slasher movies, and only last year they released their remake of The Slumber Party Massacre, which delivered plenty of bloody fun moments.
This image drop is likely a prelude to an official release date announcement and trailer for Bring It On: Cheer or Die, possibly later this week. It is more than likely that the film will premiere in October, considering its Halloween-inflected vibe, so the promotional machine is probably kicking into full gear. Hopefully, the trailer will reveal a bit more about the horror elements of the film now that the characters have been established.