Is The Next Texas Chainsaw About Leatherface’s Teenage Years?

You just can’t keep a good psycho killer down. Even though 2013’s Texas Chainsaw 3D opened to paltry reviews and smaller box office numbers than 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the slasher reboot did well enough to get sequel talk started quickly. Now, a year after Texas Chainsaw 3D, we still knew very little about whether Millenium Films is actually working to bring us another installment – until yesterday.

Bloody Disgusting was very recently tipped off by an anonymous source that Lionsgate is back in talks to bring the next installment of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to theaters. However, the movie that Bloody Disgusting has heard about isn’t a direct sequel to last year’s reboot, despite that entry ending on a cliffhanger and setting up brand new family dynamics.

Instead, the site reports that an unidentified writer is in talks to pen a script that centers on Leatherface’s “teenage years.” What does that mean, you may ask? Well, Dan Yeager wouldn’t be returning to star as the chainsaw-wielding serial killer, and Alexandra Daddario, established as the franchise’s new leading lady in Texas Chainsaw 3D, would also be out.

Honestly, a prequel about Leatherface’s evolution into the sadistic killer we all love to watch in these movies seems like an awful idea to me. Part of the character’s appeal is his mystique, and ripping away his mask to focus on the actual person beneath almost defeats the purpose of the Texas Chinsaw movies. Additionally, I can’t imagine that kind of prequel being anything but grim and depressing, and the social climate right now is such that audiences don’t really have any desire to watch mentally disturbed teenagers commit acts of heinous violence against innocents.

Though I’d like to say that we should trust in Millenium Films to do right by the spirit of the series, no horror franchise has been wronged so terribly as Texas Chainsaw. The first film was an instant classic of the slasher genre, and the second (though drastically different) had its perks, including a more wacky and hilarious story. Every film since then, however, has been a real buzzkill (sorry). I hope that rumors of a prequel are as groundless as the idea is ill-advised (aka: very), and that the next installment will continue Texas Chainsaw 3D‘s bold strategy of turning Leatherface into an antihero. That will surely be more interesting than an entire film of waiting for a younger Leatherface to put on the mask, as we all know he eventually will.