How Long-Awaited 'Behind The Mask' Sequel Is Taking The Film Directly To The Fans
No film festival route, no traditional distribution. This is how the filmmakers plan to take Behind The Mask II: The Return of Leslie Vernon directly to the fans.
In the current movie landscape, nothing ever stays dead. Not really. But one of the more recently revived projects, Behind the Mask II: The Return of Leslie Vernon, is interesting because the sequel is opting to reach audiences by embracing a more direct, grassroots approach rather than traditional distribution.
The first film, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, came out in 2006. A horror mockumentary, it followed a morally ambiguous documentarian and her film crew as they followed the psychopath Leslie Vernon as he plotted to deliver a reign of terror on a quiet town. The film became a cult hit, earning a loyal fanbase who enjoyed its meta-minded horror in which killers like Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees were real and inspired twisted people like Vernon.
That it’s taken 20 years to make a sequel is a bit of a surprise, but it was more to do with coming up with a satisfying idea than anything else. Especially as the self-referential nature of Behind the Mask began to crop up everywhere. Director Scott Glosserman points out:
“Whether it was Tropic Thunder, and then back to 2015’s The Final Girls, or even Wicked today. Everything is self-referential.”
Co-writer David J. Stieve says:
“It was super frustrating in the interim years because we knew we wanted to do it and we tried, and the fans were asking, and we wanted to deliver. But everything that’s happened in the last three or four years? We know it’s happening at the right time.”
Referring to all the horror reboots (Scream, The Exorcist, Halloween), he continues:
“We need to come back and comment about all of it.”
Without giving much away, Stieve suggested that if the first movie deconstructed the rules of 20th century last century’s slasher cinema, then the sequel would explore what those rules mean to modern fans who know the rules, and how the villain has adapted to it.
Clearly, there is a fondness for the film as many of the original cast and crew are returning, including Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund, who appeared in the first film. But just as the killer will adapt to a different horror landscape, the sequel intends to approach the making and marketing for a new ecosystem.
Glosserman elaborates:
“We’re making this with the community. We’re taking the best practices of the online creator community — how they build their audiences, how they build content through collaborations with their audience — and combining it with the best practices of the professional indie film world.”
This includes a Kickstarter campaign that will allow fans to get directly involved through platforms like Substack and Discord, while theatrical distribution will be organized through Glosserman’s company GATHR. The fundraising is designed to give the community an opportunity to help design he sequel’s future while also building buzz for the film’s release.
Glosserman says:
“Unlike a film whose destination is a sale at a festival, we are building our audience so we can go directly to that audience with our release.”
Personally, I’m very intrigued to see how this plays out for the Behind the Mask II: The Return of Leslie Vernon team, especially since they already have a passionate fanbase eager for a sequel. From a business perspective, this makes sense: here is an audience willing to pay money for something, so take it straight to them. If the film is able to recoup its budget and turn a profit, it will be the latest case study to confirm that a direct-to-consumer model can help smaller, less traditional and creatively innovative films to be found by audiences desperate for stories that Hollywood isn’t putting out. Fans want to engage; and films that have done so— like Hundreds of Beavers— have been rewarded for it.
What is becoming increasingly apparent is that the old way of taking a film to a festival and hoping it sells is becoming even riskier, especially for first-time filmmakers. At Sundance earlier this year, many of the films that were bought were either by known film directors— Olivia Wilde’s The Invite selling to A24; Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex1 to Magnolia Pictures— or feature actors already known in the industry— such as Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård in Wicker.
While I do think it’s a little unfair that all the marketing and distribution work that was usually taken on by other professionals is now being offloaded on to the filmmakers themselves, I think the newer models of distributing a film— the direct-to-consumer fan-engagement model— is also an opportunity for the filmmakers themselves to participate in the rewards (financial and figurative). It also forces filmmakers to think about every aspect of their film, which can be stressful, but can eliminate bad ideas in favor of ideas that can sell. I mean, the Behind the Mask team literally reference Substack as one way of involving fans— if you’re on Substack and reading this, and you want to make films, this is ideal for using as a template. It is, at the end of the day, called show business for a reason: you want to make a profit so that you can make your next film, right?
Thanks for reading! If you liked this essay, you can sign up here for more issues. If you’d like to support Three Left Feet Media, share this newsletter with a fellow film lover you think would appreciate it.
Long live the movies!
D.L. Holmes
Which also stars Olivia Wilde, so maybe having Olivia Wilde attached to a project increases a film’s chances of selling at a film festival.