Despite being best known as some of the goriest and most brutal horror movies the genre has seen, director Damien Leone says his independent Terrifier franchise was almost picked up by a big mainstream studio.
“They wanted to reboot it for a wider audience. That’s not what I was interested in. They would say, ‘It’s gotta be rated R, it can’t be as gory as you made it,'” Leone tells Total Film in our new issue out on Thursday, September 12, which features The Penguin on the cover. The director refrained from mentioning which studio asked to remake his Clown-centric flicks, however, he ultimately turned them down.
“I knew they’d never let me shoot the first 10 minutes of what I wanted to do [in Terrifier 3],” adds the director. “So I thought, ‘Let’s just stay true to what this franchise is.'” The third movie in Leone’s bloody saga is said to be the goriest yet, with scenes causing Art star David Howard Thornton to almost throw up.
We’ve got an exclusive image from the new movie too, which features Art the Clown looking suitably terrifying. Check out the full image below.
The first Terrifier movie dropped in 2016 introducing horror fans to murderous entity Art the Clown, but things really ramped up in 2022 with Terrifier 2, which displayed such violent scenes it had moviegoers vomiting in their seats. Now, with a bigger budget, larger fanbase, and a wider theatrical release, the director promises that number 3 will be even worse.
But the franchise had very humble beginnings. Leone’s Art the Clown was first introduced in the director’s short film The 9th Circle in 2006. He then appeared in the Terrifier short in 2011 which was posted to YouTube and in Leone’s first feature film All Hallows Eve in 2013. After that, the filmmaker decided to give his jester buddy his own flick, and with a $250,000 budget raised by crowdfunding, Leone’s first Terrifier feature film made $15.7 million.
“They were so curious as to what I did with so little money,” says Leone, referring to the studio who wanted to buy out his ever-growing franchise. Well, whatever he is doing is working. Leone’s threequel, which just so happens to be a Christmas movie, will soon hit the big screen with an international theatrical release.
Terrifier 3 is released on October 11. You can read more about it and a whole lot else besides in the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves and digital newsstands on Thursday, September 12.
Check out the covers below:
Subscribers have the exclusive text-free cover on the way to them right now, with the issue then hitting shops and digital newsstands on Thursday 12 September.
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