Fede Alvarez On Where Leatherface Has Been For Between Original & New Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Fede Alvarez is a producer on the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre that hits Netflix tomorrow, and he’s revealed where Leatherface has been between the original and now. The new film, which arrives on February 18th, is a direct sequel to the 1974 Tobe Hooper original, and Alvarez spoke with Bloody Disgusting’s Boo Crew Podcast about what he’s been up to since them.

“You see a photo of young Leatherface… an old picture from the late 70s,” Alvarez said about Leatherface’s whereabouts since the first film. “The logic for me is that Leatherface, after the crimes of the original movie, just ran away. [His new mother figure] took pity on him… saw that he was mentally challenged and scared and probably did some terrible things.”

Interestingly, Alvarez notes that while the new film doesn’t deal with the sequels to the original movie, he believes those movies still probably happened. He noted of the mother figure, “She took him in under her wing. Probably… I think…. a lot of the movies that happened after [the original] still happened. He probably escaped, ya know. He was in and out of that place for a long time. I think she probably gave him enough chances as movies [that] happened. And then it got to a point that he settled down. He just stayed there.”

In regards to this new mother figure, played by Alice Krige, Alvarez said, “It’s not his real mother. I don’t think she likes the Sawyers. I think she’s a really good lady. She hasn’t been doing anything bad. Anything wrong. She doesn’t want him to kill.”

The new film is described as follows:

Melody (Sarah Yarkin), her teenage sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), and their friends Dante (Jacob Latimore) and Ruth (Nell Hudson), head to the remote town of Harlow, Texas to start an idealistic new business venture. But their dream soon turns into a waking nightmare when they accidentally disrupt the home of Leatherface, the deranged serial killer whose blood-soaked legacy continues to haunt the area’s residents — including Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), the sole survivor of his infamous 1973 massacre who’s hell-bent on seeking revenge.