'A Quiet Place 2': Brian Tyree Henry Drops Out, Djimon Hounsou Steps In

A Quiet Place 2 has just replaced one of its stars.Brian Tyree Henry (Atlanta), who was set to star in director John Krasinski's upcoming sequel alongside returning cast members Emily Blunt, Noah Jupe, and Millicent Simmonds, has left the production due to scheduling conflicts. Djimon Hounsou (Shazam!, Amistad) will take his place.

While Housou is an Oscar-nominated actor who's been in a ton of great films, Henry has been on a real hot streak lately, so we can't help but be slightly disappointed in this casting change. Deadline says that Henry "exited over scheduling problems," and while that very well could be the truth, "scheduling conflicts" has been one of the go-to excuses for an actor to leave a project since time immemorial because of how vague it is: it allows everyone to save face and doesn't make anyone the bad guy in the situation.

But as I mentioned, Henry has been on fire lately. Last year, he had TV roles on BoJack Horseman, Room 104, and Drunk History. But his film work was what really got Hollywood's attention. He appeared in seven movies, including the stylized assassin thriller Hotel Artemis and the drug drama White Boy Rick, he lent his voice to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, played a conniving politician in Steve McQueen's heist movie Widows, and delivered a devastating monologue in Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk. Plus, he has seasons 3 and 4 of Atlanta coming up, he was cast in Marvel's The Eternals, and he's co-starring with Jennifer Lawrence in a new movie to boot, so it stands to reason that he's pretty busy these days.

Hounsou's certainly no slouch, either: in the past twelve months, he's appeared in Aquaman, Serenity, Captain Marvel, and Shazam!, and he's about to co-star in the new Charlie's Angels movie and the Kingsman prequel The King's Man.

A Quiet Place 2 started filming almost a month ago, but it's unclear if Henry shot any scenes that will now need to be reshot with Hounsou in the role. Specific details about the movie have largely been kept under wraps, but we know it's a direct sequel to the first film and it follows the Abbot family encountering new characters played by Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins) and Hounsou. Here's how Krasinski has previously teased the film:

"[With A Quiet Place 2], we have the world. So it's actually the world that's built, it's the idea that the rest of the world is going through this exact same experience. Are there other people that have to survive like this? It's that idea of living through the set of circumstances, not again in the same way obviously, but exploring it more. You only got to do it intimately for a small amount of time, so what happens next?"

A Quiet Place 2 creeps its way into theaters on March 20, 2020.