A24 is betting big on a horror giant, with several Texas Chainsaw Massacre projects currently in development at the studio, best known for its Oscar-winning indie projects like Everything Everywhere All at Once. Since the franchise was put on ice after Netflix’s disastrous 2022 reboot, A24 beat out the competition in a fierce, appropriately bloodthirsty bidding war, and it’s sparing no expense after paying top dollar for the infamous horror franchise. Not only is there a television series based on the IP in development, with Top Gun: Maverick star Glen Powell producing, but it was also recently announced that up-and-coming horror filmmaker Curry Barker would write and direct the next chapter of the Sawyer Family saga.
In a recent interview with Total Film, Barker explained that exploring the Sawyer Family specifically (not just the franchise’s most iconic character of Bubba “Leatherface” Sawyer) is what interests him the most about bringing Texas Chainsaw back to the public eye. The Obsession director made it clear that he wants to respect the original source material while also giving it its own identity, particularly when it comes to the “unfomfotability” of what happens at the Sawyer family’s infamous farm, much of which he says is “untapped.” Barker also made clear that he’s well aware that many online have said that there’s no reason to reboot a horror franchise that has already been remade this many times, but he still thinks there’s plenty of places for the series to go:
“Seriously, I really think that the potential for that series has not been fully realized. I actually feel like a lot of the remakes went the complete opposite direction that then it should have gone. I’m really excited to do a ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ that’s not just about a guy chasing some people around with the chainsaw. [One] that has some heart to it, you know? Where you care about these characters, and you want to see them survive, but you know… is still brutal.”
“Heart” isn’t the first thing one typically thinks of for a franchise all about indiscriminate killing, so that already shows Barker is thinking outside the box. The focus on the Sawyer (sometimes the Slaughter) family rather than just Leatherface is also very much in line with the franchise’s roots, as the family members played by the likes of Matthew McConaughey are just as important as the chainsaw-wielding killer. All in all, Barker’s love for the franchise and willingness to push its boundaries are a very strong sign for whatever he and A24 have planned.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
What’s Next for A24?
A24 has 3 major movies set for release within the next few months, two of which are based on established IP. The first is the Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor-starring horror flick Backrooms, based on a viral internet video, and then Hugh Jackman is set to play an older, jaded version of Sir Robin of Locksley in The Death of Robin Hood. Though easily the biggest project A24 has in the works right now is an adaptation of the smash-hit fantasy video gameElden Ring, directed by Alex Garland, which has rounded out a star-studded cast and is currently filming.
A24 and Curry Barker’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot is in development now. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
