Renny Harlin, director of the next three films of The Strangers franchise, is teasing that the trilogy opens up a whole new universe that could potentially lead to more installments in the future.
The Strangers is a psychological horror film that starred Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman and was released in 2008 about a couple that is terrorized by a trio of masked criminals. A sequel titled The Strangers: Prey at Night was released in 2018, following a similar storyline.
Harlin is now helming three new films that will all drop sometime in 2024 with The Strangers: Chapter 1 starring Madelaine Petsch and Froy Gutierrez. In a recent interview, Harlin hinted that the trilogy sets up a world where more stories could be set in the same universe.
“I definitely see more movies and it’s almost like – that’s why I don’t even call it a trilogy – I call it the first three movies of the Strangers Universe,” Harlin said in an interview with ComicBook. “And the way the third movie ends, if people thought that the original movie ended in a titillating way because Liv Tyler sort of gasps in the end of that. And you question, like, ‘Did she live, what happened?’ If you thought that was thought-provoking, I think that when the third movie ends, you are like, ‘Oh my God, what’s, what’s gonna happen now?’”
Harlin called The Strangers films “an exploration of what happens to a person mentally and physically” after being a “victim of incredible violance.”
“In the end of the third movie, you have more questions than answers and I definitely see a bunch of new movies coming after that, and just continuing her story,” Harlin added. “So instead of going the route of the original film and the sequel of it, the sequel was about the strangers attacking some other random people. Our focus is our central character and her journey and where she’s gonna go.”
Watch a clip from The Strangers: Chapter 1 in the video posted below.