The clown is just one villain that can’t be kept down. Upcoming horror movie Clown in Cornfield will soon slash onto screens this spring, just months after Terrifier 3 found huge box office success.
However, Clown in a Cornfield director Eli Craig says he’s glad he filmed his movie before Terrifier 3 came out, as if he saw how well Damien Leone’s sequel did before he took on his own clown-tastic project, he would have definitely felt the pressure.
“When I did this, Terrifier 3 had not come out yet,” Craig says in the new issue of SFX magazine, which features The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 on the cover and hits newsstands on Wednesday, April 23.T. “I knew the series, but I didn’t think it would become as iconic as it did, and I’m kind of glad I didn’t know, because it would have really spooked me.”
Although it’s the third movie in a beloved horror franchise, no one could have predicted how well Terrifier 3 would do on the big screen. Compared to a budget of $2 million, the threequel took in over $90.3 million worldwide, which is quite a feat for a series that started out as a YouTube short. However, this success has led Terrifier’s Art the Clown to become the new it-clown in horror, just as Pennywise was the most fearsome jester in the ‘80s.
But Craig isn’t too worried about the actual clown characters being compared, as Clown in a Cornfield’s baddie, Frendo, looks like more of your typical carnival clown, much different from Art’s French mime-like appearance.
In fact, Frendo comes with a whole backstory. “He was created in the late ’30s, early ’40s, in small-town America, when everything was on the rise,” he says. “It was a time when kids were buying stuff from clowns – Ronald McDonald and Krinkles the Clown – and they were actually lovable, likable figures.”
But nothing stays so sweet forever, as the movie follows conflicting locals living in a small town that has fallen on hard times after its valued factory burns down.
Soon after, an evil clown emerges from the cornfields to ‘cleanse’ the town one victim at a time. “He’s turned to the dark side of America, where he’s become a vengeful figure,” says Craig of Frendo the clown. “The loss and the division in the country all comes out in this one character. It seems so suited for our times.”
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Clown in a Cornfield releases on May 9. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which will be available from Wednesday, April 23. Check out The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 cover you need to be looking out for on newsstands below…
The streets aren’t the only thing getting taken over. #DeadCity is your @SFXmagazine May cover. Drops April 23. 🗞️ pic.twitter.com/dGc6U6N1DYApril 17, 2025
