Director Renny Harlin (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master) and producer Courtney Solomon have teamed up to make a trilogy of movies inspired by the 2008 film The Strangers (watch it HERE), with Madelaine Petsch (Riverdale) taking the lead role in The Strangers: Chapter 1, which Lionsgate will be giving a theatrical release on May 17th. Petsch and Solomon just appeared on a Q&A panel at the Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, where it was said they would be showing “exclusive unseen footage” from the first film in the trilogy. As it turns out, that unseen footage was a trailer – and you can now check it out in the embed above!

We’ve heard that Lionsgate will also be releasing The Strangers: Chapter 2 and The Strangers: Chapter 3 by the end of the year.

Petsch is joined in the cast of these films by Froy Gutierrez (Cruel Summer), Rachel Shenton (All Creatures Great and Small), Gabriel Basso (Hillbilly Elegy), and Ema Horvath (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power). The Strangers: Chapter 1 centers on Petsch’s character as she drives cross-country with her longtime boyfriend (Gutierrez) to begin a new life in the Pacific Northwest. When their car breaks down in Venus, Oregon, they’re forced to spend the night in a secluded Airbnb, where they are terrorized from dusk till dawn by three masked strangers. Lionsgate plans from there to expanding the story in new and unexpected ways with its sequels.

The new Strangers trilogy was filmed in Slovakia, and all three movies were shot simultaneously. Solomon produced them with Mark Canton, Christopher Milburn, Gary Raskin, Charlie Dombeck, and Alastair Birlingham. Andrei Boncea, Dorothy Canton, and Roy Lee serve as executive producers. Rafaella Biscayn, Frame Film SK, Johanna Harlin, Juan Garcia Peredo, and Alberto Burgueno are co-producing. 

Harlin has said The Strangers: Chapter 1 “is close to the original movie in its set-up of a young couple in an isolated environment in a house and a home invasion happening for random reasons.” Then Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 “explore what happens to the victims of this kind of violence and who the perpetrators are of this kind of violence. Where are they coming from and why?“

What did you think of the trailer for The Strangers: Chapter 1? Will you be catching this movie on the big screen in May? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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