Written by 
Brad Miska was barely paying attention when he realized horror movie history was happening. The co-founder of the horror movie site Bloody Disgusting has lived and breathed horror films his entire life and, as such, knows they have the potential to suck. So you can’t blame him for throwing on a seemingly unassuming sequel called Terrifier 2 and continuing with his day. But then it happened.
“I like to pay attention to the films when I’m watching them but for whatever reason that day I was distracted and it was on in the background. I got somewhere like 15-20 minutes into it and I was like ‘Something is special about this movie. This isn’t what I thought it was going to be,’” Miska told io9. “I stopped everything I was doing, started the movie over, paid full attention, and the second it was over my initial reaction was ‘This is a masterpiece. This is one of the best horror films I’ve ever seen in my entire life.’”
This was May 2022 and, at the time, Miska’s job was finding films to acquire for ScreamBox, a horror streaming service owned by parent company Cineverse. It was a gig he got after Cineverse acquired his website and the team there realized his years of film expertise gave him a distinct perspective on what was cool and what wasn’t. Terrifier 2 was just one of many movies under consideration. To make sure he wasn’t going crazy though, he asked John Squires, now editor-in-chief of Blood Disgusting, to validate his thoughts and Squires agreed. Terrifier 2 was awesome. The rest is history.
Fast forward three years and Terrifier 3 recently opened #1 at the box office on its opening weekend and finished third in its second weekend. It’s a bona fide horror smash, which is wild considering it’s independent and not released by a studio, unrated, incredibly violent, and had minimal traditional marketing. Most of the credit for that success goes to writer-director Damien Leone and producer Phil Falcone for shepherding and believing in the franchise in the first place, as well as allowing Cineverse to acquire and release it. But it’s also partially because, that day, Miska took notice and pitched up the phone.
“Immediately we were all hands on deck,” he said. “We had to have this movie, whatever it takes.” So they called Leone and Falcone and pitched them on the film coming to Cineverse and ScreamBox via Bloody Disgusting.
“They knew they had something special already,” Miska said. “They believed it in their heart. They knew they had this fan base growing and they knew there was a hardcore group of people who loved Terrifier and they believed in the movie so much They were thinking about just kind of releasing [Terrifier 2] themselves.” But, eventually, they put their trust in Miska and the team to work their magic and get Terrifier 2 in front of as many people as possible.
Just a few months later, in September 2022, the team at Cineverse was true to its word. Terrifier 2 opened on almost 1,000 screens and instantly began to build buzz and make money. Because it was deemed a “specialty release,” with some theaters screening it just one or two times a day, the fact the film was unrated wasn’t an issue. In the subsequent weeks, word of the film just grew and grew. The press got ahold of it, more and more theaters booked it, and a few weeks later, it had grossed over $10 million on its way to over $15 million.
That success made a Terrifier 3 all but a certainty and, though he came on late in the process with Terrifier 2, Miska and the team were on board with three from the very beginning. He’s credited on Terrifier 3 as an executive producer.
“What we gave [Leone] was trust,” Miska said. “We let him make his movie. He knew if a studio saw those first 5-10 pages they would have said ‘No’ and wouldn’t let him do it. We were just like ‘Whatever you want to do, you do it.’ Even when we got the first cut and you see just how brutal some of this stuff is nobody said anything. To be completely honest with you, I was kind of shocked that none of the higher-level executives at my company said anything ever. They were super supportive and just let him do his thing.”
The question then became, could lightning strike twice? With Terrifier 2, its wanton gore was surprising and shocking to audiences. The resulting financial success? Wholly unexpected. Coming off that with Terrifier 3, audiences had a better idea of what to expect, as did theaters. Miska thinks the film sets that bar in its first scene.
“When you kill a kid in the opening scene … and you continue to watch the movie you are giving license to the filmmaker to do it again,” Miska said. “And you can’t complain because you just sat through it … You’re kind of strapping yourself in it at that point for anything.”
That was also the attitude of the filmmakers and distributors. Sure, expectations for Terrifier 3 were bigger all around. They’d seen word of mouth and viral press help drive the second film but, when the third one held its first screening at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, they strapped themselves in for anything.
“We didn’t know how people were gonna take it,” Miska said. “People could have hated the movie and it would have been a whole different situation. It was really nerve-wracking and really scary—and once everyone was being receptive and loved it, then [there was] momentum. You could feel like ‘Okay at least people like it now and the gore is hitting.’”
Though there’d been some marketing before the film’s premiere, afterward is when it kicked into full gear: social media, news posts, reviews, etc. But, again, very minimal traditional media. You aren’t going to see Terrifier 3 commercials during football games. The trailer will only play in front of very specific movies. You won’t the film’s star, Art the Clown, on lots of billboards. But that was all calculated.
“There’s a bunch of rock stars over at Cineverse who helped build all the content really quickly and get all that stuff out and did an awesome job on the socials,” Miska said. “And yeah, our history that we have as journalists—that was a huge part of, I think, how I was able to blow up two and three, to really put it in the position to launch it.”
That’s a key thing here too. As a former film journalist, Miska and his team have a very unique, specific set of skills and knowledge that made marketing Terrifier 2 and 3 hyper-focused. “This was all just using our own toolbox that we know from running websites for the past 20-25 years,” Miska said. “We had a conversation with the marketing team [and] we were talking about promoting Terrifier 3, and I always try and remind them I have an eye for this because I’ve seen every single piece of marketing materials for horror movies for 25 years. Literally every single piece or material. I’ve seen it and know every story behind every movie. So we can look at a piece of content and just know immediately if it works, if it doesn’t work and, what they were thinking. You just know.”
That’s a confidence that Miska shares with the filmmakers too. “They believe in themselves,” he said. “They believe in their franchise, they believe in their characters. They believe in their work They believe in their fans on a level that I have never seen before… They just believed in [it] so much that it was a crazy thing to experience.”
Plus, that belief means Leone and Falcone have never had to sell to a studio. They own the rights to everything Terrifier which puts them in a position the creators of Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Michael Myers do not.
“As long as [Leone] still owns it and controls it with Phil, they can do anything they want, whenever they want,” Miska said. “They could keep it canonized. They could do spin-offs. They could do remakes. Anything they want, and horror fans only have to wait as long as it takes for them to make another one for them. It’s like the good old days when we got a new slasher every two or three years. It was awesome.”
Sounds like, after the success of Terrifier 3, Art the Clown and his world will only continue to grow. And as rights issues for Jason, Freddy, and their friends continue to keep them out of theaters, Hollywood studios can sit back and watch as the film fans like Leone, Falcone, Miska, and others slash their way to the top.
Terrifier 3 is now in theaters. The first two films, Terrifier and Terrifier 2, are both streaming on Prime Video.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.