A late-breaking story on Friday gave us the news that A24 was the front-runner to land the rights to the Texas Chain Saw Massacre franchise. The news broke from Jeff Sneider and was confirmed by Deadline. The rights were up for auction and had multiple interested parties around Hollywood, but it’s reported that A24 is the closest to winning film and television rights. Deadline’s reporting also placed the first project, if A24 gets the rights, as a television series from JT Mollner, Roy Lee, and Glen Powell. Powell would not star in the series, however, but being a native Texan, he’d be a big name to get on as a producer.

All of this could go up in smoke, because of the nature of these types of deals, but let’s just say for the sake of this article, that A24 does get the rights. What would that look like? The last Texas Chainsaw Massacre film we’ve had was Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) on Netflix. That film came from director David Blue Garcia and was produced by Fede Alvarez. It was a legacy sequel that saw a group of teen influencers trying to make a utopian town in Texas, that happened to be occupied by Leatherface. It also brought back Sally Hardesty (recast) to face off with Leatherface for one last time.

Looking at the list of rumored filmmakers and studios involved with the franchise, it was a who’s who of horror today. Jordan Peele, Osgood Perkins, Taylor Sheridan (not horror, but still Yellowstone is huge), and of course this group from A24. They would all bring different takes to this classic horror franchise. The big wrinkle to this is what A24 does with Crystal Lake. That’s their big kicking off point with IP-based horror filmmaking.

Crystal Lake Might Be The Key

Crystal Lake

The only footage that we’ve seen from Crystal Lake was at the Jason Universe panel at San Diego Comic-Con. As this is A24’s first foray into IP horror, it’s going to tell us a lot about what they want to do with Texas Chain Saw Massacre. These days, hearing A24 brings up groans or cheers depending on who you ask. They’re known for the so-called “elevated horror” genre, and that brings baggage with it. For something that’s as traditional as TCM, they can’t mess around with the series, we need Leatherface, the Sawyer family, kills, etc.

But there’s also a change on the horizon for A24 where they want to move into bigger box office affairs like superheroes and IP-based movies/series. So that might assuage any fears that Texas Chain Saw Massacre fans would have with the company taking over.

So Is It Actually A Good Thing That A24 Has TCM?

Yes, it is a good thing. Getting new Texas Chain Saw Massacre movies and series on our screens will always be something I’ll support. These horror icons are icons for a reason. We started with the Universal Monsters, and Michael, Jason, Freddy, Chucky, Leatherface, and others like that are part of our culture. They’re icons, and they deserve the biggest and best creatives working on new stories.

In a world where we have little to nothing from our biggest slasher villains, Art the Clown took over by storm, but there’s plenty of room for Leatherface to make his mark. With backing from creatives like JT Mollner, Roy Lee, and Glen Powell, there could be something special with a TV series exploring the Sawyer family.

TV is the next frontier for horror, with longer stories, more room to let characters grow, and we could be in for something special from A24 and Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

What do you think of this news? Let us know in the comments.

For more on Horror, check out Fright-A-Thon.

Source: Deadline, Jeff Sneider

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