Ari Aster just dropped a bombshell about a secret Hereditary script he’s been sitting on for years. The director revealed the status of a completed prequel during a recent Q&A appearance.
What Ari Aster revealed about the completed Hereditary prequel script
Ari Aster revealed he has written a completed prequel script for his 2018 debut horror film Hereditary, as Gold Derby reported. The director shared the news during an American Cinematheque Bleak Week Q&A on Sunday. “I wrote a prequel to this,” Aster said. “It never feels like the right time.”
Aster stressed the script explores events before the original film rather than continuing its story. “It’s a prequel, not a sequel so I don’t know where this goes,” he said. The director offered no timeline or production details for the project.
The conversation also turned to the current independent horror landscape. Aster praised Backrooms director Kane Parsons and Obsession filmmaker Curry Barker for their recent box office achievements. “He’s 20 years old and what he’s been doing on Blender, I think he’s clearly following a vision,” Aster said of Parsons. He described the current moment for young horror filmmakers as exciting.
Aster also pushed back against the “elevated horror” label frequently applied to his work. He rejected the term and blamed critics for creating it. “I hate the term elevated horror especially because it’s sort of a box that I was put in and horror fans took umbrage,” Aster said. He insisted he never used the phrase himself.
The director placed Hereditary within the lineage of classic horror rather than a new subgenre. He cited Rosemary’s Baby as a deliberate influence on the film’s ending. “I was just trying to make a really good horror movie,” he said. He also acknowledged Robert Eggers’ The Witch for working in the same tradition before him.
Aster originally chose horror as a practical way to finance his first feature. He had written earlier drafts of Beau Is Afraid and Eddington first. “Then I realized if I passed it through the horror filter, all those things would suddenly become approachable,” Aster said.
