‘Maxxxine is very different from both of them’: Ti West on closing out his X horror trilogy

For the past fewer years, Ti West hasn’t stopped reasoning astir the fearfulness villains Pearl and Maxine. Since 2020, the writer and manager has been afloat immersed successful the genre-spanning franchise that started with the ’70s slasher flick X and continued with the technicolor prequel Pearl, which were filmed back-to-back successful New Zealand during the pandemic and released successful 2022. Now things culminate with the premiere of the series’ 3rd act, the precise ’80s thriller Maxxxine. It’s been an aggravated process that has meant West hasn’t had overmuch clip for thing else. “It’s each specified a blur astatine this point,” helium tells The Verge. “It’s been 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, for 4 and a fractional years.”

The franchise was born, successful part, retired of practicality. West had initially lone pitched X to the powers that beryllium astatine A24 but had ideas for a bigger trilogy successful the backmost of his mind. And aft getting a formed and unit to New Zealand and gathering the sets, helium realized helium could movie a batch of that enactment again for a prequel. “We had already spent each of this clip and wealth gathering a Texas workplace successful New Zealand. How bash we reuse it for free?” helium remembers thinking. “How bash we amortize each of those costs and marque the movie little of a hazard for A24? That’s wherever the thought came from from a applicable standpoint.” He ended up penning the publication for Pearl successful a two-week-long flurry portion successful quarantine truthful that they could commencement shooting close away.

Because of this, the archetypal 2 films service arsenic accompanying pieces. Not lone are the sets mostly the same, but Mia Goth stars successful both. In Pearl, she’s the titular villain, and successful X, she plays some an aged Pearl and Maxine, the sole subsister of the elder’s latest massacre. Stylistically, the films are antithetic — 1 awash successful agleam Wizard of Oz colors, the different grimy similar the Texas Chainsaw Massacre — but they stock a choky transportation done the story, location, and cast. West says that helium ever had “rough ideas” for a trilogy but didn’t truly perpetrate to penning until helium knew the adjacent movie was a definite thing.

Pearl and X were scrappy films, and their occurrence meant that West was capable to grow the standard and ambition of Maxxxine with a bigger-budget production. The farmhouse is gone, swapped retired for a glitzy Hollywood afloat of stars. The communicative follows Maxine arsenic she attempts to marque it arsenic an histrion lone to get caught up with a slayer stalking Los Angeles, and Goth is joined by a formed that includes Elizabeth Debicki, Halsey, Giancarlo Esposito, and Kevin Bacon. That accrued standard means accrued expectations, but West says helium intentionally decided to spell bigger for the 3rd movie due to the fact that the extremity was “to not repetition ourselves.”

“That was portion of the conception of the trilogy: they would beryllium precise antithetic and cinema would beryllium the connective tissue,” helium explains. “But also, the different 2 movies are contained, and they didn’t person scope. To instrumentality it to Hollywood, to instrumentality it to Los Angeles, the movie needed to person scope … if X is simply a movie astir idiosyncratic who wants to get into the movie concern from the outside, and Pearl is astir idiosyncratic who looks astatine the movie concern arsenic hopeful, Maxxxine is simply a movie wherever you’re present now. What’s it really like?”

Tying to this thought of making each movie chiseled was the extremity of besides making each basal connected its own. They complement each other, and the viewing acquisition is richer if you ticker them all, but you tin commencement astatine immoderate constituent successful the story. West says that helium wanted “to marque a trilogy wherever you didn’t person to spot the different movies. That alienates a immense information of the assemblage who would ne'er ticker a movie like X, truthful they won’t spot Maxxxine. Pearl is simply a large illustration of that: I didn’t privation radical to deliberation they couldn’t spot Pearl due to the fact that the thought of X freaked them retired excessively much.”

That’s however helium yet landed connected the franchise’s unsocial naming scheme. The archetypal thought was to travel X with XX and culminate successful XXX, but that changed erstwhile helium started enactment connected the aboriginal films. “Once I wrote Pearl, it was wide this movie should beryllium called Pearl,” helium explains, adding that “by immoderate miracle, Maxine has an X successful her name, truthful we could conscionable adhd Xs. I don’t cognize what we would’ve called it if she didn’t person an X successful her name.”

For now, Maxxxine marks the extremity of the story. But, arsenic with before, West is inactive kicking astir immoderate ideas for wherever the franchise could spell from here. While he’s not giving thing distant conscionable yet, determination is 1 cardinal quality this time: helium mightiness really instrumentality a break. “I’d similar to effort to get the snowball rolling connected immoderate I’m hoping to beryllium next,” helium says, “and past instrumentality a small abrogation earlier jumping into it.”