Have you ever had a feeling of déjà vu set to the cacophonous co-mingling of guttural screams and a rumbling chainsaw? Millennium Films is reportedly moving forward with their second installment in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, and they’ve hired under-the-radar screenwriter Seth M. Sherwood to handle the script. They’re calling it Leatherface, which was also the title of Jeff Burr’s third series entry, and it’s going to be a prequel, which is basically what 2006’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning was. I’m going to go watch a serpent eat itself for a while.
Details are being kept under wraps – presumably ones made out of victims’ skin – but the story is expected to be an origin story for the cannibalistic Leatherface set in the 1970s. Apparently, producers Christa Campbell and Lati Grobman have forgotten how many horrible horror prequels have been in the last…forever. (Does anyone really count Hannibal Rising as a part of that film series?) Still, all the power in the world to them if they can buck the trend with a largely untested writer.
So far, Sherwood’s main contributions to the world of pop culture have been a few episodes of the comedy web series The World of Cory and Sid and the upcoming short film Fruitcake, which centers on transorbital lobotomies becoming all the rage in a suburban neighborhood in 1952. He’s reportedly got a supernatural project that is set to be directed by Paranormal Activity 5’s Greg Plotkin, and also wrote the 2012 thriller Interstate 5 (that screenplay ended up on the 2012 Blood List, which is the Black List for horror movies).
At this point, though, it’s not like Sherwood can do worse than some of the writers that have tackled Texas Chainsaw films in the past. I’m not a fan of anything after Hooper’s stellar sequel. There were some good parts about everything after that – except for whatever the hell Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation was – but almost never because the script itself was a revelation. It’s almost always about the director and the kills and other atrocities that get put on the screen.
Leatherface isn’t necessarily someone whose dementia needs to be traced back to its origins, but I guess I’ll get into it if he makes a pair of sweet ass bell bottoms out of someone’s flesh. It doesn’t appear that anyone from Texas Chainsaw 3D will be able to come back for this sequel, though I guess anything is possible in this universe. According to The Wrap, Millennium is expected to sign a director in the next few weeks, with a production start possibly coming as early as this winter.
