Here’s Everything We Know About ‘Hereditary’ Director Ari Aster’s Next Horror Film
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In the wake of the critically acclaimed Hereditary, you’re probably equal parts excited and terrified to see what writer/director Ari Aster does next. Believe it or not, Hereditary was Aster’s debut feature, and you could say that his future as a filmmaker is looking incredibly bright… as well as, if Hereditary is any indication, impossibly dark.
Aster, as he revealed in a chat with THR, has more on his mind than horror – “I would love to make a musical,” he told the site – but his next is indeed another horror film, tentatively titled Midsommer. Specifically, it’s another horror film with A24, the company that brought Hereditary (and countless other recent genre gems like Green Room and The Witch) into theaters.
“I’m in pre-production for my next film which will be shooting in Hungary. A24 is doing that as well, and that is technically a horror film,” Aster tells THR. “It’s Scandinavian folk horror. That is the only other horror movie I have. And I’m pretty sure that’s going to be it for a long time.”
A24 will both produce and fully finance Aster’s “Scandinavian folk horror” film, which is expected to be their largest production to date. As Deadline recently noted, the film is going to kick off production in late Summer/early Fall 2018, with the plot following a young woman who reluctantly joins her boyfriend on a summer trip.
As you’d probably expect, things quickly go awry from there.
Aster recently teased more details in a chat with Film Comment, calling Midsommer an “apocalyptic breakup movie,” while also expounding on the plot…
The story follows a young couple visiting an isolated Swedish village; over the course of their vacation, they discover that its residents participate in an eccentric set of seasonal traditions. The recent death of the main character’s parents casts a sense of dread over the proceedings.
Hungary is playing the role of Sweden for Midsommer, where the horror film’s main setting, a 15-building village, will soon be constructed by the production crew.
After Midsommer, Aster will be moving beyond the horror genre, as he explains to THR…
“I consider myself a genre filmmaker in that I want to play in every genre. I would love to make a musical. I have ten other scripts that I’ve written that I want to make and there are other things I have. I’m writing a sci-fi film and there are at least four or five movies that I have ready to go that I am excited about making that I’d like to do in succession.”
Universal has been having a hell of a time getting their Universal Monsters brand back on a better path in the wake of the Dark Universe collapsing, with four movies thus far released in the years since The Mummy attempted to get that interconnected universe off the ground.
First was Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, to date the only post-Mummy hit for the Universal Monsters, followed by The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, and now Abigail. The latter three films have attempted to bring Dracula back to the screen in fresh ways, but both Demeter and Renfield severely underperformed at the box office. And while Abigail is a far better vampire movie than those two, it’s unfortunately also struggling to turn a profit.
Where does the Universal Monsters brand go from here? The good news is that Universal and Blumhouse have once again enlisted the help of Leigh Whannell for their upcoming Wolf Man reboot, which is howling its way into theaters in January 2025. This is good news, of course, because Whannell’s Invisible Man was the best – and certainly most profitable – of the post-Dark Universe movies that Universal has been able to conjure up. The film ended its worldwide run with $144 million back in 2020, a massive win considering the $7 million budget.
Given the film was such a success, you may wondering why The Invisible Man 2 hasn’t come along in these past four years. But the wait for that sequel may be coming to an end.
Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, The Invisible Man star Elisabeth Moss notes that she feels “very good” about the sequel’s development at this point in time.
“Blumhouse and my production company [Love & Squalor Pictures]… we are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” Moss updates this week. “And I feel very good about it.”
She adds, “We are very much intent on continuing that story.”
At the end of the 2020 movie, Elisabeth Moss’s heroine Cecilia Kass uses her stalker’s high-tech invisibility suit to kill him, now in possession of the technology that ruined her life.
Stay tuned for more on The Invisible Man 2 as we learn it.
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