Curry Barker’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot now has a full production team behind it, and the horror world is paying attention. The director came off Obsession, a film made on a $750,000 budget that has taken $230 million at the global box office, and he is now among the most in-demand names in genre filmmaking. The Chainsaw job is the biggest commission of his career so far, and the people building it around him suggest no one is treating it lightly.
Curry Barker Texas Chainsaw: The Team Taking on Leatherface
According to Variety, the film will be produced by Roy Lee and Steven Schneider of Spooky Pictures, alongside Stuart Manashil and Exurbia Films’ Pat Cassidy, Ian Henkel and Kim Henkel. That production line-up signals serious intent from A24, which landed the rights to the franchise and appears committed to a full-scale revival. Barker will write and direct the reboot.
Barker has spoken plainly about what draws him back to this particular patch of Texas. He watched Tobe Hooper’s original at age 11 and credits it as a key reason he became a director. ‘I think of it as respecting the source material,’ he said. ‘I absolutely love the original film, but I want to do something that’s different. I’m not gonna stray away too far from what we know, but just making it stronger. Really, I want to lean into the uncomfortability of the family. I want to lean into the rawness of what’s going on there. There’s some really messed up stuff happening at that farm.’
Anyone who sat through Obsession‘s grimmer moments, including a scene involving a skull and a steering wheel that has lodged itself in a lot of people’s memories, will believe him.
Anything But Ghosts and the Obsession Cinematic Universe
Before Leatherface, Barker is finishing something else entirely. He is currently in production on Anything But Ghosts at Blumhouse, where he serves as director, co-writer and star, again according to Variety. Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard have also signed on. The film follows two fake paranormal investigators whose con unravels when they encounter something genuinely supernatural. Cooper Tomlinson, who played Ian in Obsession, co-wrote the script with Barker and is also in the cast.
The two films are not entirely separate worlds. At a screening Q&A, Barker confirmed that Anything But Ghosts will exist in the same universe as Obsession, with a buried reference to the fallout from the cursed wish at the centre of the first film. ‘There’s like a news article thing on the next movie where you hear a news anchor talking about a triple homicide [by] a woman,’ he said, which suggests poor Nikki is getting the blame for what the demonic entity put her through. It is a neat piece of world-building, delivered with the same dark humour that made Obsession such an odd, joyful watch.
The question of a direct Obsession sequel is still open. Producer James Harris told Variety that he expects the conversation to begin ‘sooner rather than later’, but that Barker’s schedule is the obvious complicating factor. Two films in production and a major franchise reboot will do that.
A24’s Broader Chainsaw Push
A24 is not stopping at a single film. The studio is also developing a separate Texas Chainsaw Massacre television series, which Deadline reports is in the hands of writer JT Mollner, with Glen Powell and Dan Cohen producing at Barnstorm. The film and the series are separate projects, running in parallel rather than as a single connected production.
For A24, the investment in Leatherface as a franchise makes a certain kind of sense. The studio built its reputation on elevated, auteur-led horror, and Barker fits that template. He came from nowhere with a micro-budget film and turned it into one of the genuine box-office stories of the year, driven almost entirely by word of mouth. That is exactly the kind of track record that earns you a seat at the table with one of horror cinema’s most enduring properties.
The production team is assembled, Blumhouse has him for Anything But Ghosts, and A24 has him for Chainsaw. The next update to watch for is a release date on either project from Barker’s camp.
