Terrifier 3 is coming, director Damien Leone promised fans at the end of an online watch party Tuesday for Terrifier 2: “I will say this… Terrifier 3 will pick up right where Part 2 ends and it is fkn WILD,” he tweeted, adding a fire emoji.
Terrifier 2 became one of the year’s breakout horror films — and a major indie success story — when it earned more than $11 million in theaters on a budget of just $250,000. But it wasn’t an overnight success: Leone first debuted Art the Clown, the villain of the Terrifier saga, way back in 2008 with the short film “The 9th Circle,” in which Art was played by Mike Gianelli. Art the Clown subsequently appeared in the 2013 film All Hallows Eve and the original 2016 film Terrifier, finally breaking through with Terrifier 2, which was released in theaters in October and is now available on Screambox on video on demand.
In Terrifier 2, in which David Howard Thornton plays Art, the demonic clown terrorizes Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) and her younger brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) on Halloween night. During the watch party, which carried the Thanksgiving-themed hashtag #ThanksKillingWithArt, Leone shared lots of behind-the-scenes details of the film, including that Leone put condoms underneath one character’s melted face prosthetic “and blew into tubes to make ’em bubble” and that “Sienna’s costume was literally held together by duct tape.” You can read all his insights here.
The film received a major publicity boost thanks to reports of it making people faint and vomit in theaters. That of course drew curious, strong-stomached horror films in droves. (“To everyone saying that reports of people fainting and puking during screenings of Terrifier 2 is a marketing ploy, I swear on the success of the film it is NOT. These reports are 100% legit. I wish we were smart enough to think of that!” Leone tweeted in October. “But then again we didn’t need to.”)
Audiences weren’t just drawn to the spectacle: The film has an 85 on Rotten Tomatoes, and even earned a passing mention from Stephen King, who tweeted, “That movie THE TERRIFIER looks pretty good. Has anyone seen it?”
Leone told Variety in a recent interview that he was already planning a Terrifier 3 when he made Terrifier 2.
“There are so many questions brought up in Part 2 that are not answered, and that was part of the design because I know I’m going into a Part 3. I pretty much have the entire treatment ready for Part 3, but it’s getting so big that it could potentially split into a Part 4 because I wouldn’t want to make another 2 hour 20 minute movie. So we’ll see,” he said.
He also said he’s trying to balance just the right amount of overkill.
“I think we’re set up to fail with Part 3 in terms of the gore, no matter what, because now people have their expectations so high. If I go way past that we’re going to be thrown into the bad taste category, and if we don’t hit that then we’re going to have dropped the ball. So I have to hit a bullseye in terms of the gore for Part 3. So no pressure there,” he said.
Lauren LaVera as Sienna Shaw and David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown in Terrifier 2, directed by Damien Leone.