If the 1980s was a golden decade for horror movies, seeing the blooming of enjoyable sagas like Friday the 13th, Child’s Play or A Nightmare on Elm Street, the 1990s was its ugly bastard brother. Because besides being a road to the decadence of the previously mentioned sagas (a decadence that still runs to date), other ones with a doubtfully quality start. One of those sagas started with Leprechaun (1993), a movie about an evil, sadistic Leprechaun goes on a killing rampage in search of his beloved pot of gold. The first movie wasn’t that bad, it was starred by a debutant Jennifer Aniston and the always enjoyable Warwick Davis, the immortal Willow Ufgood from Willow (1988), who also starred in the awful sequels, being Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood (2003) his last portrait of the role. The character was burnt out, and the collection of bad sequels killed all the possible interest by the fans.
A few years ago, the saga had an unfortunate reboot with Leprechaun: Origins (2014). The addition of new blood to the Leprechaun universe didn’t work as expected. It was responsible for the future director of the interesting Dead Rising: Watchtower (2015), Zach Lipovsky, and had the professional wrestler star Dylan Postl in the role of the evil little creature. But the magic didn’t work as expected.
Now, the people from SyFy channel have decided to give the character another chance and are immersed in the production of Leprechaun Returns (2019). Although the Leprechaun is already too damaged by all those previous bad movies, this new one might have some facts for optimism. Suzanne Keilly, who has been one of the writers of wonderful TV series Ash vs Evil Dead (2015-2016), has been in charge of the screenplay. Steven Kostanski, responsible of the fantastic The Void (2016), and co-director of one of the best Troma movies of this decade, Father’s Day (2011), is behind the cameras. The Leprechaun will be played this time by a new quite unknown actor Linden Porco, who will share the screen with Taylor Spreitler, Mark Holton, Pepi Sonuga and Sai Bennett.
Leprechaun Returns (2019) is currently in the status of filming and is expected to be available in the SyFy channel on March next year, probably for Saint Patrick’s Day. But SyFy already shared a first teaser in their official YouTube channel, so here it is:
