Editorials
‘Mr. Brooks’: The Kevin Costner Horror Franchise That Should’ve Been
Kevin Costner is one of the few actors to spend a career almost entirely avoiding sequels. In fact, the only role he’s reprised from one movie to the next is that of Jonathan Kent, the adoptive father of Clark Kent/Superman. After a supporting role in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, he returned for a cameo in the controversial Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
It’s not that the actor/director has lacked opportunities to make sequels, though. Michael Blake, the novelist and screenwriter behind Dances with Wolves, wrote book continuations to Costner’s biggest hit as a filmmaker and reportedly long tried to get a sequel movie off the ground, but Costner never showed interest.
Hits like Bull Durham and The Bodyguard also had sequels in early stages of development at one point or another, but the star never jumped too hard on them. Even major box office successes like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves surprisingly came and went without followups.
There was one film, however, that Costner showed an uncharacteristically enthusiastic desire to franchise early on in its promotion — Mr. Brooks, a 2007 cult film that found Costner playing the role of a serial killer fighting his taste for ending human life.
The rare villainous role for Costner, Mr. Brooks was a play on the horror genre that was released across the country over a summer that included sharp competition like the third installments to the Pirates of the Caribbean and Shrek franchises. Perhaps if Brooks had debuted in a year like 2017, where mass audiences seem more open to horror movies that bend the rules, it would have found some modicum of success at the box office. In 2007, it did, well… just okay.
On a $20 million production budget, the film took in just under $30 million domestically. It had a worldwide total gross just below $50 million.
The film has since earned more of a following, but it never became the breakout success that Costner and company needed to justify two promised sequels to round out a trilogy telling the tale of Earl Brooks, a successful business and family man harboring an addiction to murder.
After decades of fictional serial killers like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger being embraced by audiences, screenwriters Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans (who also directed) delivered a horror film from the killer’s perspective. In a wonderful and kooky twist, Brooks’ killing is not something he takes major delight in, but rather a weight on his shoulders and an addiction he can’t kick – sort of like alcohol or drugs. Except way bloodier.
There’s even a scene of Brooks attending an AA meeting, so how can you not love this wacky movie?
Though the trilogy of Mr. Brooks films was touted by Costner, Gideon, Evans and everyone in between through press interviews, it just never came to be.
Entirely on its own, as it ended up being, Mr. Brooks is a one of a kind killer thriller starring some seriously great actors. There’s Costner as our titular killer, plus William Hurt as the id of Mr. Brooks, brought to life as an adult imaginary friend who has a surprisingly gripping emotional relationship with our main character.
Then there’s Demi Moore as the detective hot on the trail of Brooks, a criminal who is providing a nice distraction from her own personal turmoil, which includes a messy divorce and the possibility of losing much of her family’s considerable wealth. There is also Marg Helgenberger and Danielle Panabaker as Brooks’ wife and daughter, respectively. Rounding out the cast is a surprisingly strong Dane Cook as a young man blackmailing Mr. Brooks into an apprenticeship in killing.
The final product is lightning in a bottle. It manages to be darkly humorous in parts and surprisingly moving in others. It’s an absurdist concept molded in the hands of craftsmen looking to create a true character drama, no matter how out-there the twists and turns get.
“When the writers first presented the notion [of a sequel] to me, I said, ‘Oh, bullshit!,’” Costner told Entertainment Weekly in anticipation of the film’s release. “I haven’t done ‘Tin Cup 2,’ or ‘Bull Durham 2,’ or ‘Open Range: The Early Years,’ so you don’t have to try to hook me with that.’ But when they told me their idea, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. We’re hoping this little movie develops a following so we can play this story out the way it should.”
There’s no telling where Mr. Brooks 2 and Mr. Brooks 3 would have gone with this world. There is one thing we know for sure, though — the options were endless. Would Brooks have become some sort of anti-hero, helping Demi Moore’s detective solve cases? How would he have dealt with his daughter, a (spoiler!) killer the film suggests is far more disturbed than Brooks could ever be?
Costner’s Brooks was a truly original creation who could have only grown with sequels. He was Freddy Krueger or Charles Lee Ray, but with the twist of a moral conscience. He craved the same things those lunatics craved, but he was filled with regret over his desires. And we buy into all of this because Costner and the writers so deeply commit to the idea of realistic addiction and recovery at the center of this chaotic and unpredictable world. The first film presented a redemption arc for Brooks that would have been superb to see played out until the end.
Costner has never been a great admirer of the sequel in his career, which is what should make people even more disappointed that Mr. Brooks 2 and Mr. Brooks 3 don’t exist.
After all, they had to have been pretty special to get him excited.
There’s a lot of reading left to do in 2026, between the glut of summer releases and the approach of fall, when horror titles get a special push from publishers, but this has already been an incredible year for horror literature.
Some of the biggest names in the genre have turned in outstanding work, rising stars have made their mark, and we’re only halfway through the year.
To celebrate the midway point of 2026, with plenty of horror books still to come, we’re taking a look back at the best horror books we’ve read this year so far, listed alphabetically by author.
If you missed any of these books earlier in the year, consider this your reminder to catch up.
Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
A student running from a crime he may or may not have committed escapes to his father’s country home in Japan, only to find himself haunted by strange apparitions, while in the past, a young samurai tries to find salvation for her family and finds a door to the future instead. Kylie Lee Baker’s Japanese Gothic begins with this dialogue between past and present, and then blossoms into so much more, a cross-time ghost story about old wounds and what it really takes to finally heal them. I got so happily lost in this one that I would have read at least 200 more pages.
Persona by Aoife Josie Clements
In this tale of shut-ins, sex workers, artists, and the horrors they both summon and recoil from, Aoife Josie Clements weaves something that feels less like a story to be experienced and more like a psychic wound to be endured, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Evocative in its prose and nightmarish in its imagery, Persona is a story of the masks we wear, and the understanding that not all of our masks are particularly pretty or even easy to breathe through. It’s a dense, literary, unnervingly vicious book, and while it’s already attracted an audience, it deserves a much bigger one.
Dead First by Johnny Compton
Johnny Compton’s latest novel opens with a throwing down of the gauntlet, a sequence that made me instantly think “How on Earth is he going to top this?” It’s a story that begins with a billionaire hiring a private investigator to determine why, despite trying in many brutal ways, he cannot die. That premise, and the scene which sets it all off, is so alluring and delightfully gruesome that you almost can’t believe it’s the way a book begins, and then Compton just keeps going, delivering a supernatural mystery that I could not put down.
Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey
A woman grieving for the life she wanted visits a mysterious island renowned for the healing salt its residents harvest and sell, seeking renewal and relief. What she finds instead is a strange cult with a twisted history with surprising resonance in her own life, and a people who are more than willing to grant the relief she wants, for a price. Laced with beautiful prose and moments of profound realization alongside folk and even cosmic horror, this is vintage Sarah Gailey.
Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus
If you love horror film history and analysis, Partially Devoured is an essential. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Kraus, the book is a deep dive into his favorite movie of all time, George A. Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead, complete with exhaustive research into the making of the film and passages of deeply moving memoir woven in. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the eerie music that opens the film is called while also bursting into tears at how horror movies can save your life, this is a must-read.
Wretch by Eric LaRocca
Our reigning King of Extreme Horror, Eric LaRocca weaves books of uncommon beauty out of the most nightmarish parts of humanity, and Wretch is no exception. The story of a grieving man who longs for relief and searches for it amid a strange support group that might be a cult, Wretch is a brutal journey into the darkest part of us all, and explores what salvation we might find when we get to the rotten core of the world and peel back its layers. LaRocca’s on a tear of great work right now that few other genre writers can match.
Headlights by CJ Leede
A mystery, a serial killer horror show, a tribute to Stephen King‘s The Shining. All of these things describe CJ Leede’s Headlights, and yet they don’t begin to cover the full breadth of horror awaiting you in this novel. The story of a former FBI agent drawn back into the cold case that haunts him most, it’s a shocker brimming over with vivid moments that’ll live behind your eyes. CJ Leede has now published three novels, and they’re all bangers, so it’s time to get on board if you haven’t already.
It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia Pelayo has been one of our finest genre writers for years now, but It Came From Neverland is my favorite thing she’s written, and it’s not even close. A dark take on Peter Pan from the perspective of an adult Wendy Darling living in World War I-era London, Pelayo’s book works as both a satisfying horror narrative and a rich exploration of what it really means to never grow up. The horror never loses its potency, but it’s the search for the meaning behind the Peter Pan phenomenon in our own lives, and what we can do about it, that sticks with me most.
Filth Eaters by Ito Romo
Ito Romo’s Filth Eaters is a slim volume, one you can read in just a couple of hours if you’ve got the inclination, but it has the feel of a generation-spanning epic. The story of a breed of vampires born in Central America, the European vampires who encounter them, and the offspring they eventually produced, it spans centuries and packs loads of juicy lore into its pages while never losing its grip on character and narrative drive. I would read hundreds more pages of this world, but I’ll settle for this uncommonly grand-scale novella for now.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay
A former pro gamer gets a job at a tech company to pilot a brain-dead human body across the country, and so Paul Tremblay’s sci-fi-horror juggernaut begins. Indebted to Philip K. Dick, the primal snarl of Harlan Ellison, and the quirky comedy of The Big Lebowski, and yet wholly original, this is a towering and ambitious novel by one of horror’s most respected voices. What starts as a high-concept tech thriller soon becomes a startling meditation on the value of stories, who gets to tell them, and what happens when we cede too much control to machines we don’t understand. It’s a stunner.
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