Bird Box on Netflix SEQUEL news: Is the author's NEXT book a Bird Box sequel?

Many fans and critics have already pointed out the similarities between Bird Box and A Quiet Place. The new Netflix horror is based on the primal fear that if you open your eyes you will die. In this case, because terrifying alien monsters will manipulate a person’s fears to make them commit suicide. In this year’s smash A quiet Place, invading alien monsters hunted by sound, so silence, rather than blindness, was the key to survival. Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s follow-up novel actually deals with a  terrifying and deadly sound…

The 2017 horror novel Black Mad Wheel is described as: “From the author of the hit literary horror debut Bird Box comes a chilling novel about a group of musicians conscripted by the US government to track down the source of a strange and debilitating sound.

“Part Heart of Darkness, part Lost, Josh Malerman’s breathtaking new novel plunges us into the depths of psychological horror, where you can’t always believe everything you hear.”

So, is this what happens after Bird Box? What will Malorie and her kids face next?

The Netflix movie ends on a slightly more “hopeful” note than the original book.

Director Susanne Bier explained: “The book also has a kind of positive ending and I would not have wanted to do an apocalyptic movie that didn’t have a hopeful ending. I’m not particularly interested for the audience to leave, from the cinema or their own screen, with a kind of completely bleak point of view. That’s not really what I believe in. And so for me it was key and part of what made me interested in it, was that if this scary, dystopian story, which actually has a hopeful undercurrent … there is a hopefulness in trust. That is a hopefulness in love. There is a hopeful note in certain values that I really appreciate it. And I thought that was hugely important.”

Whether that hope translates into safety and a future for Malorie and her children remains to be seen.

Netflix will no doubt be tempted to explore options for a sequel following the movie’s enthusiastic reception.

However, much as fans are keen to know what happens after Malorie finds refuse at the former home for the blind, there is no answer to be found in Black Mad Wheel. Despite the similar concept, the book is clearly set in 1957, long before Bird Box, and deals with an entirely different scenario as the US government sends a young rock band into the African desert on a terrifying mission to find out what is causing a deadly noise.

That is not to say Netflix couldn’t develop their own follow-up, ofcourse – with or without the help of Malerman, himself.

BIRD BOX IS OUT NOW ON NETFLIX