Orphan 3 is coming, linear aging be damned

The Orphan franchise will continue with a third installment, it was announced on Tuesday. The series follows an adult Eastern European woman with a particular condition that makes her look like a child who insinuates herself into the homes of unsuspecting families, ultimately wreaking havoc and murder. Orphan 3 will once again star Isabelle Fuhrman as the titular villain, with Orphan: First Kill‘s screenwriter David Coggeshall and director William Brent Bell re-teaming for the threequel. 

“Dark Castle is excited to announce another terrifying chapter in the Orphan saga,” Norman Golightly, Co-CEO of Dark Castle Entertainment, said in a statement (via Variety). “With the past success of the first two movies and another thrilling storyline, we are confident that Orphan 3 will be a must-see movie for both current fans of the franchise, and new fans alike.”

Details for the plot of the new film are under wraps for now, but the trick here is that Fuhrman does not have a condition that makes her look like a child. It’s been 15 years since the first film premiered, and the actor—currently starring in Kevin Costner’s Horizon films—looks more or less like a normal 27-year-old woman. Fuhrman’s age already required some suspension of disbelief in Orphan: First Kill; the 2022 prequel was obviously set before the events of 2009’s Orphan, and Fuhrman obviously no longer looked like a 10-year-old girl. Lionsgate and Dark Castle Entertainment are clearly committed to not recasting the role (or following the story of a different “orphan”), so you have to figure it’s almost like a campy visual gag at this point (unless they go the digital de-aging route, of course).

Orphan holds a very particular place in the cultural consciousness. The film was said to be based on the case of Barbora Škrlová, a Czech woman with genuine hypopituitarism that allowed her to pose as a child. Later, Orphan became tangled up in the true crime tale of Natalia Grace Barnett, who was accused of perpetuating a similar scheme to Škrlová. Natalia Grace maintained her innocence, and thought her adoptive parents must have been inspired to think she was older than she was because of the movie. Her tale is being adapted into a Hulu series called Natalia starring Ellen Pompeo as the adoptive mother; when the project was first announced, it was under the working title “Untitled Orphan Project.”