Terrifier 2 became a horror phenomenon in 2022. A movie made on the kind of budget that most blockbusters would balk at the low-budget nature of the sequel invoked memories of Wes Craven’s original A Nightmare on Elm Street with its ingenious and quite frankly sickening special effects, and a central entity that became an instant horror icon in Art the Clown. Having made a huge profit at the box office, and instigated a re-release of its predecessor and the movie that originally brought the gleefully silent and sadistic killer to life, it is not surprising that things will be getting bigger for the for the next instalment. However, writer and director Damien Leone would love to work with two other huge genre icons.
Although the writers and actors strike is now wreaking its own kind of havoc in Hollywood, work on Terrifier 3 began earlier this year, with plans to expand the universe Art inhabits thanks to it’s expanded seven-figure budget, an impossible-to-comprehend leap from the $250,000 that the two and half hour gorefest of Terrifier 2 was made on. However, as well as continuing Art’s story, Leone would love to be able to do his own take on Friday the 13th, and wouldn’t mind seeing Art go up against a certain knife-fingered dream demon as well. He told Mad Monster Party Arizona:
“If I could make or reboot or have my crack at one of the classic films, I would love to take a shot at Friday the 13th. Jason was always my number one as a kid. We get asked a lot if we could have Art “team up” with somebody or fight somebody. I would love to have him team up or fight Freddy because I feel like their sense of humors would work really well together.”
Based on the current legalities around both of those franchises, plus the Friday the 13th projects already in development, it seems unlikely that we will be seeing Art vs Freddy in anything other some pieces of fan artwork.
Terrifier 3 Could Be Great if it Remembers its Roots.
Terrifier 2 was a huge leap from the 2016 original, which itself came off the back of previous short appearances by the malevolent character of Art the Clown as far back as 2008’s The 9th Circle. Having built a creepy mythology into Terrifier 2, which took the sequel much further than the very straight-forward slasher story of the first film, there is a lot of expectation on Terrifier 3 to continue to build on that but it cannot lose sight of the low-budget way of thinking that made Terrifer 2 such a great movie for horror fans.
Many comparisons have been made between Terrifier and the Evil Dead franchise, and there are many notable similarities between the paths of the two movies. Damien Leone’s franchise has the ability to be this generation’s Evil Dead, a movie that has managed to shock in an unshockable age but now has the task of outdoing itself once again without ruining everything it has laid down previously.
