Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Andrew Sanford | News | April 10, 2026
Horror sequels rarely had to justify their existence during the boom of the VHS market. Some would try. They would bend over backwards, twisting and remixing their own lore to present a reason that another chapter was absolutely vital, but not as much so as the one after that, or the one after that. So many of these films would end with cliffhangers, and the sequel would feel no need to address them correctly, or they would end definitively, and still end up finding a way to crawl back.
Because of this, you could walk into your local Hollywood Video (Block-what?), see a wall of horror titles, and spend hours just reading the descriptions of the sequels before realizing that your mom wouldn’t let you rent it (even though she often did), before you move on to a video game and action movie. Still, those sequels were there, for better or worse, and then, the DVD market made them even more plentiful. However, some movies just came along a bit too late to take advantage. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon was one of them.
The 2007 film is about a documentary crew that is following a burgeoning masked slasher named Leslie Vernon. It digs into the tropes of slasher films, while reveling in them itself. You also get fun scene-stealing roles from film legends like Scott Wilson, Robert Englund, and Zelda Rubenstein. The movie loses a little steam toward the end as it falls victim to what it is satirizing, but it’s a good time, and it seemed primed for a sequel during the height of Blu-rays, but nothing ever materialized, until now.
Variety has announced that, over twenty years later, Director Scott Glosserman and writer David J. Stieve will be delivering a sequel, with stars Nathan Baesel, Angela Goethals, and Englund set to return as well. There aren’t any details yet, but the creators say a Kickstarter campaign will be launched, though the film will be made regardless. However, the bigger the campaign, the bigger the sequel, which is being produced by Paper Street Pictures.
The funniest little detail tucked into the article is that (alleged) friend of the site, Adam F. Goldberg, will serve as an executive producer on the film. If I had to guess, his adding his name to the mix helped the movie get the funding it received to begin with. Regardless, Glosserman said in a statement that it’s the fans who should take a victory lap. “For 20 years, people have asked if Leslie would ever come back. The truth is, he never really left,” he explained. “Fans kept this movie alive by sharing it, quoting it, introducing it to their friends, and treating it like something worth holding onto. This sequel is happening because of them.”
That rules. There’s a lot of potential for a Vernon sequel, and the original wears its love for the genre so thoroughly on its sleeve that I don’t doubt that it will have a lot of fun revisiting the character.
