Despite the resounding financial and critical success of Ari Aster‘s debut feature Hereditary, the horror auteur has no immediate plans for a followup.
Amid the American Cinematheque’s annual Bleak Week — which featured a lineup of his fare, including Midsommar: Director’s Cut, Beau Is Afraid and Eddington — the filmmaker spoke at a Q&A yesterday, revealing he has a script set in that universe, but no immediate plans to develop it further.
“I wrote a prequel to this,” Aster said, per Gold Derby. “It never feels like the right time. It’s a prequel, not a sequel, so I don’t know where this goes.”
Released in 2018, the occult film put Aster on the map and broke records for A24 at the time, having now amassed a worldwide box office gross of over $90 million. The supernatural psychological horror, written and helmed by Aster, follows a family rocked by grief, who begins to experience sinister and inexplicable occurrences. It stars Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd and Gabriel Byrne.
Though Aster is leaving Graham family alone for now, the multihyphenate is currently working on another film, which will be his latest after 2025’s satirical neo-noir Eddington.
Last month, sources told Deadline that Aster is directing the pic Scapegoat from a script he penned, with Scarlett Johansson set to star. Insiders added that Aster will reunite with A24, which has released his past four films, as the distributor. As per usual, plot details are being kept under wraps.
Outside of directing, Square Peg, founded by Lars Knudsen and Aster, has set the return of its filmmaker mentorship initiative, Square Peg Social. The second edition will take place in Austin from Sept. 17-21, with submissions now open.