The (semi-) recent urge to turn well-known slasher properties into elevated horror TV spectacles can’t help but seem a bit odd to us, if only because the slasher ethos seems frankly at odds with the sort of fleshing out that TV’s relaxed pace naturally affords. We were excited enough to see Bryan Fuller’s version of Friday The 13th TV series Crystal Lake, back before it got rejected by A24, but that was more about Fuller’s idiosyncrasies than the deep mythos of Jason Voorhees. (The show is now being retooled for Peacock by Brad Caleb Kane.) Bates Motel got some traction out of diving deep on Psycho (mostly thanks to Freddie Highmore and Vere Farmiga), and shows like Ratched or Castle Rock found occasional sparks of life by fleshing out characters from iconic works. But part of the point, and the potency, of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is that it’s not especially deep: Every franchise installment that has tried to do more with it than “some kids wander just slightly too far off the beaten path and run straight into extremely human, extremely sharp horror” has floundered and flailed.
But we digress: A24 has an eye on doing the TV series thing, reportedly with a team-up between Strange Darling director JT Mollner, Weapons producer Roy Lee, and, weirdly, Glen Powell, who would produce, but not star, in the show. No plot details about the show have been leaked, but common sense suggests it would dive deeper into Leatherface and his extremely fucked-up family, who prey (pretty literally) on anyone unfortunate enough to end up in their radius. (You could make a show more focused on the victims, we guess, but life expectancies in this version of rural Texas aren’t typically robust enough to support long-term character building.) The show isn’t the only production A24 might use the rights for, though; Lee might also pitch a film version for Netflix. (The streamer was the franchise’s most recent film home, playing host to the poorly received 2022 installment from David Blue Garcia.)
Other suitors for the TCM rights have included Oz Perkins—who’s apparently still in the race—and Jordan Peele, who dropped out of contention pretty early on.
