If you saw the gritty western horror film Bone Tomahawk you were probably struck by just how impressively writer-director S. Craig Zahler blended typical Wild West movie heroes and landscapes with a bloody nightmare when a tribe of cannibals starts hacking up townsfolk. You then might ask what kind of horror franchise Zahler would love to reinvigorate with this kind of unrelenting fervor. Would anyone in the world have guessed he’d be tackling the Puppet Master series? I wouldn’t have! But that’s exactly what he’s doing.
As reported by Birth.Movies.Death from a Fangoria interview, Zahler will turn his attention to multiple new films in Charles Band‘s cult horror franchise and will write the first installment called–get ready for this–Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich. Just in case you needed magical murder puppets to have a distinctly Hitlerian feel. The movie’s plot will revolve around the dolls coming to life at a toy convention and killing folks. It even already has a poster!
So that’s terrifying.
The Puppet Master franchise began in 1989 from writer-producer Charles Band and his Full Moon Features and has spawned ten sequels to date, including a crossover with the similar-themed Demonic Toys. The series revolves around a group of anthropomorphic puppets animated by an Egyptian spell, each equipped with its own unique and dangerous device, most famously Blade who looks like this…
Zahler is a busy fellow, because not only is he writing this installment of Puppet Master but also writing and directing the brutal action drama Brawl in Cell Block 99, which sounds like it could be like that Punisher scene in Daredevil for 90 minutes but with Vince Vaughn.
Let us know what you think about some gritty rebooted Puppet Master in the comments below!
Images: Full Moon/Paramount, Di Bonaventura Pictures/Caliber Media
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He is still afraid of any and all puppets and masters thereof. Follow him on Twitter!
