'Terrifier 3' may end franchise, creator Damien Leone says

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- Terrifier creator Damien Leone said the horror franchise could end with the upcoming Terrifier 3.

His film, Terrifier 2, which will be re-released in theaters Wednesday, will now include a teaser for the next sequel.

"I knew where I was going to take this one and where I was going to end the entire franchise eventually," Leone told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.

Leone is not revealing whether Terrifier 3 concludes the trilogy or sets up the subsequent conclusion. Leone said to confirm that would be "too much of a spoiler."

Terrifier centers on Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), a silent murderer in full clown makeup. Though presumably killed in the first Terrifier, Terrifier 2 had Art resurrected supernaturally.

Leone said fans he meets at horror conventions ask him to never stop making Art the Clown sequels. However, Leone is concerned about diminishing returns.

"The well is going to run dry and you're just going to keep repeating yourself at some point," Leone said. "I want to have my own Damien Leone solid franchise within the Terrifier universe."

When Leone is finished, he said, he would not stop other filmmakers from continuing after him.

"When I'm done, I'm sure somebody else is going to come in and down the line they'll reboot the franchise and they'll make it all over again," Leone said. "There'll be 100 more and this will outlive me, for sure."

Terrifier 2 introduced the heroine Sienna (Lauren LaVera) and her brother, Jonathan (Elliott Fullam). Leone confirmed they would return in Terrifier 3.

"I feel like this franchise is just as much Sienna's now as it is Art's," Leone said, adding that Terrifier 3 explores how the survivors are "coping with the trauma that they're now suffering with and, of course, Art's return."

Terrifier 2 opened in theaters Oct. 6, 2022. The 700 screen release made it into the box office Top 10, along with reports that audiences were fainting and vomiting at the film's graphic scenes, according to USA Today.

"What really makes me proud of that is that it was real," Leone said. "It was organic. It wasn't any kind of marketing ploy or publicity stunt. Those were real accounts."

The scene that triggered that comes when Art attacks a girl (Casey Hartnett) in her bedroom. He leaves her just alive enough to keep struggling while he graphically tortures her.

"That does not work without Casey Harnett, who plays Allie, and the work she put into that scene," Leone said. "The space she had to be in for five days straight shooting that for 18 hours at a time is not easy."

Before directing, Leone worked as a special effects artist ​​in horror movies. He said he had been practicing makeup effects since he was 12, scaring his grandmother with fake cuts.

Leone made the first Art the Clown short film, The 9th Circle, in 2008. It starred his friend, Mike Gianelli, who reprised the role in 2011's Terrifier short, but did not want to continue acting in feature films.

While preparing the 2016 Terrifier feature, Leone auditioned 10 actors and chose Thornton as Art.

"For David's audition, I told him, 'I need to see you decapitate somebody and do it very gleefully,'" Leone said. "He just instantly flipped a switch and he did all this wonderful Jim Carrey-esque/Mr. Bean movement."

Leone said Art's unpredictable physicality makes him unique among masked slashers in horror movies. Art mimes clown comedy, but a victim never knows when the performance is going to turn deadly.

"Never feeling safe around this character, never knowing what he's going to pull out of his bag of tricks at any time, it keeps the audience on their toes," Leone said.

Leone said Terrifier 3 will reinvent Art the Clown yet again.

"With Terrifier 3, I want them to feel very uncomfortable with this character and I want them to be more afraid of him than ever," Leone said. "I want it to be as if they've never met him before when they meet him again in Part 3."

Though Terrifier 3 was not in production before the Writers Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists went on strike, Leone had filmed the teaser. The Terrifier 2 re-release provided the venue to show it to fans.

"This was actually filmed quite some time ago," Leone said. "This is the perfect opportunity."