New 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' Sequel Is In Development, 'Don't Breathe' Director Fede Alvarez Producing

After 2017's disappointing prequel Leatherface, it looked like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film franchise may have closed its tool shed for the last time. But it looks like the ol' saw has been gassed up and the door has just been kicked open once again, because a new report says we're getting another Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel, this time in the vein of what David Gordon Green and Danny McBride did with last year's Halloween movie. Here's what we know about the project so far.

Bloody-Disgusting says that Fede Alvarez, the director behind Don't Breathe and the Evil Dead remake, is on board to produce a new Texas Chainsaw sequel for Legendary Pictures, and that the company reportedly plans to expand the franchise with multiple movies and a TV show. While no director is attached to the new film yet, here's the plan for what Alvarez supposedly has in store:

While plans aren't set in stone, we're hearing that the hope is to make a direct sequel to [Tobe] Hooper's '74 film, similar to what Blumhouse and Universal have done with Halloween. Unfortunately, Texas Chain Saw Massacre's Final Girl, Marilyn Burns, passed away in 2014. It will be interesting to see how they continue the story without her, although it could just focus on the current state of the Sawyer family.

The whole "hey, just forget most of this franchise happened" approach seems to be gaining in popularity: it worked well in 2006's Superman Returns, extremely well in last year's Halloween, and we'll see how effective it is with the upcoming Terminator: Dark Fate. (I'd totally forgotten they also tried it with 2015's Terminator: Genisys, which speaks to how totally ineffective it was in that case.)

Alvarez is a mostly solid filmmaker whose only produced film so far has been Don't Breathe, so his track record on that front doesn't really mean much when trying to gauge his involvement here. And while the 2003 remake of Tobe Hooper's original was not half bad, I'm not super interested in more Texas Chainsaw unless it's coming from someone with a wildly different perspective on the material to freshen things up. After a quick search, it looks like Rachel Talalay is the only female director to have ever been given the opportunity to direct a horror film featuring a cinematic icon like Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, or Leatherface, so maybe it's about time to look to a female director to potentially provide that new perspective on this character.