The Terrifier franchise has had one helluva trajectory over the course of the past decade. What started out as little more than a shoestring-budget short film from writer-director Damien Leone has since evolved into a monolithic juggernaut of the modern horror genre.
Art the Clown has gone from a niche fascination for genre enthusiasts to one of the most easily recognizable and popular antagonists that the genre has had in years. With three feature-length Terrifier films now under his belt, Leone is promising that the upcoming fourth film, the aptly titled Terrifier 4, is going to be the most insane and scary installment yet.
On social media, the franchise creator reposted an image that a fan had made, saying that Leone had said that Terrifer 4 would be “like part 2 but on steroids.” The director also added a simple “oh yeah" as definitive confirmation that not only was the quote accurate, but also that he wanted to share the sentiment with fans on an even broader level.
For the uninitiated, Terrifier 2 was a big deal not only for Leone’s career as a filmmaker but for the franchise as a whole. While the filmmaker had been putting in the work, directing multiple short films and even segments of indie anthology works (many of which featured Art the Clown in some capacity), it wasn’t until 2016 that Leone had Art the Clown make the leap to a full-blown feature-length runtime, with the first Terrifier film. While that movie became a success on the film festival circuit and in limited release, its audience grew once the film became a staple on streaming services in the years that followed. This, paired with a stellar marketing campaign and distribution method, led to the film’s sequel, Terrifier 2, becoming an unexpected pop-culture sensation when it released six years later in 2022.
For a frame of reference, the first Terrifier made just over $420,000 on a modest budget, making it a success. Terrifier 2 upgraded to a larger budget (closer to $250,000 according to most estimates) but grossed a staggering $16 million upon release. The sequel seized the zeitgeist in a way that was unprecedented, turned Art the Clown into a bona fide icon, and made Damien Leone one of the hottest commodities in horror. For instance, Leone infamously didn’t even have representation prior to the release of Terrifier 2. So it’s safe to say the success of the film well and truly changed his life and career.
In the years that followed, Leone and co. quickly set out to make another follow-up, capitalizing on the success of the sequel with Terrifier 3, which released in 2024 to even greater success, grossing $90 million on a $2 million budget. Since then, Leone has been hard at work on what he has described as the final Terrifier film. While updates about the film have been few and far between, the filmmaker has routinely insisted he is keen on making it the most ambitious and horrifying of the bunch, and this latest post seems to cement that even further.
Terrifier 4 is poised to release in October of 2027, with Leone and co. keen on closing out the franchise in gory, grisly fashion.
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