Terrifier 3 is now in theaters, meaning Art the Clown’s legions of fans have gotten the chance to see him carving up Christmas in his newly acquired Santa suit. In the second part of io9’s interview with writer, director, and editor Damien Leone, we asked him about his plans for the future of the franchise—as well as one big question we had about a certain Terrifier 3 character’s death.

Because we want to stay on Santa Art’s nice list, here’s one of these:

Cheryl Eddy, io9: Terrifier 4 hasn’t been officially announced yet, but that’s definitely something that you’re have in mind?

Damien Leone: That [tease about Terrifier 4] was at the first screening in Austin at Fantastic Fest, a post-screening Q&A, and I thought it was a little more intimate [instead of being reported everywhere]. [Laughs.] If you see Terrifier 3, it has a blatant, in-your-face cliffhanger ending. [I was asked] “So is there going to be more?” And I’m like, “Well, of course there’s going to be.” I would never leave the audience there. There’s still so much to learn. You want to see where Art the Clown and Sienna end off, and some other characters in the film—you know there needs to be absolute closure there that we didn’t even touch upon yet. So I thought it was a no-brainer. I didn’t think that, but I didn’t necessarily want that information out that there’s going to be more I didn’t see. 

io9: It seems like someone has to go to hell or come back from hell. 

Leone: There is a challenge, right? We have to find Gabbie somehow.

io9: Terrifier 3 is over two hours long, but it’s not as long as the famously lengthy Terrifier 2. I read a recent interview with you in the Hollywood Reporter where you said there were five scenes of character development that were cut. Can you speak specifically about what was in those and maybe if we’ll ever get to see those scenes?

Leone: Yeah. A polarizing aspect or divisive aspect of part two was the run time. And I always say, I think we got unjustly criticized for the runtime because it’s not the drama that’s padding out the movies. It’s really these extensive Art the Clown scenes. Usually your slasher is not in the movie this long. If you put all the screen time together of a Freddy Krueger or something, he’s probably in the movie for like eight minutes out of an hour and 35 minute movie. So, you know, Art has these big elaborate kill scenes and then these elaborate sort of foreplay scenes, I call them, where he’s just sort of toying with the victim. So it’s a kind of unorthodox way of structuring a a slasher film. But many of these [cut] scenes were scenes between Sienna and Gabbie that really fleshed out that relationship that I really, really enjoy. There was another wonderful scene between Sienna and Aunt Jess.

There were some other ones, too. There’s a cool scene of Victoria actually reattaching Art the Clown’s head—you actually see how she gets it back on. There were even some scenes that I didn’t even bother editing because I knew that we were trying to get this runtime down and I was trying to cut anywhere I possibly could. There’s also a really, really cool scene that I loved between Victoria and Gabbie during the finale, a very sadistic, psychologically sadistic scene that I wish we kept in. But again, everybody was begging me to keep this movie under two hours. So I was trying to cut wherever I possibly could without losing main story elements—we needed specific character elements, or else you wouldn’t believe any of these dynamics. You wouldn’t care for these characters ultimately. So it’s tricky.

io9: There’s a couple of main characters, especially Jonathan, whose deaths occur off screen. What was the thinking behind that?

Leone: Well, I certainly thought about showing it, but I didn’t for a couple of reasons. One, I thought it would be almost disrespectful to that character, just how much I liked that character. I didn’t want to see that character suffer after everything he’s been through. I think the reveal is so important also because there’s a big misdirect at the ending where you’re not supposed to think that that’s Jonathan. You’re supposed to think that’s Gabbie’s skull. I thought it was more effective to just reveal it that way. I know a lot of people wanted to see that poor character get killed. [Laughs.] Another reason is we would have had to kill him directly after the shower massacre scene and everybody would have been completely desensitized at that point. It would have had no impact whatsoever. I think the audience needed a little bit of time to breathe after that.

Terrifier 3 is in theaters now.

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