'Leatherface' To Be Directed By 'Inside' Filmmakers

Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury turned heads and stomachs with their intense debut feature Inside, but their follow-up films Livid and Among the Living didn't reach quite the same audience. The two have flirted with other properties over the years since Inside debuted — most notably, they were attached to a Hellraiser film for some time, and there was a point where they might have directed the Nightmare on Elm Street re-do — but never signed a deal.

Now they have chosen a next film, and it is one with a long genre history. Bustle and Maury are reportedly set to be the Leatherface directors, so they'll explore the origin story of the boogeyman of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre films. 

Bloody-Disgusting says the team has the gig to direct the script written by Seth M. Sherwood. So how does this story fit into the complicated Texas Chain Saw continuity, and which version of the main character it will explore? Because this shares a producer with Texas Chainsaw 3D, which acted as a direct sequel to the original film, essentially ignoring all other films sharing the Texas Chainsaw title apart from Tobe Hooper's 1974 original, presumably it will feature the Jed Sawyer version of the character.

(There are a few different versions of Leatherface, depending on which film you're looking at. Various sequels to the original film have kept or discarded the continuity of other sequels.)

The film finds Leatherface — or the young man who will ultimately don the mask — as one of a number of institutionalized teens. A group of kids breaks out of the institution and gets into trouble in the world outside. (Which puts it on a similar playing field to the directorial duo's film Among the Living.) That all somehow leads to the creation of the Leatherface identity.

Carl Mazzocone (Texas Chainsaw 3D), Christa Campbell (Stonehearst Asylum) and Lati Grobman (The Iceman) are producing for Lionsgate and Millennium Films. We don't know when Leatherface will shoot, or who will star when cameras do roll.