The South by Southwest festivals have been going on in Austin, Texas for over a week now – and a press release has notified us that the Strangers – the masked maniacs from the Strangers film franchise – have been seen lurking around in Austin, promoting Lionsgate’s May 17th theatrical release of their new film, The Strangers: Chapter 1. The Strangers were pictured at The Glass Coffin, the Museum of the Weird, and The Driskill, and those images can be seen at the bottom of this article.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 was directed by Renny Harlin, who shot an entire trilogy of Strangers movies at the same time. We’ve heard that Lionsgate will also be releasing The Strangers: Chapter 2 and The Strangers: Chapter 3 by the end of the year.

Madelaine Petsch (Riverdale)  has the lead role in Chapter 1 and 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. Courtney 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?“

Are you looking forward to The Strangers: Chapter 1 and its sequels? Let us know by leaving a comment below – but first, take a look at these images of the Strangers in Austin:

The post The Strangers invaded Austin to promote Chapter 1 during SXSW appeared first on JoBlo.