Ari Aster has a ‘Hereditary’ prequel script but doesn’t know what to do with it

Ari Aster has revealed that he wrote a Hereditary prequel script – but he doesn’t know what to do with it.

• READ MORE: Hereditary – film review
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The initial film was released in 2018 via A24 and was a huge commercial success, grossing $83million (£63million), against a production budget of $10million (£7.5million).

Starring Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd and Gabriel Byrne, the supernatural thriller follows a family beset by grief who then start to experience strange and unexplainable occurrences. 

At the American Cinematheque’s annual Bleak Week, which included a line-up of his films including Midsommar: Director’s Cut, Beau Is Afraid and Eddington, the filmmaker revealed the news at a Q&A.

Aster said the script was set in the Hereditary universe, but he had no plans to develop it further yet.

“I wrote a prequel to this…It never feels like the right time. It’s a prequel, not a sequel, so I don’t know where this goes” (via Deadline).

• READ MORE: Horror maestro Ari Aster: “I make each film as though I won’t make another”

Back in 2018, Aster revealed that the original cut of Hereditary was almost three hours long.

Speaking to Digital Spy, Aster revealed: “The script was very detailed and very clear. It was originally longer than it is now. The original cut was three hours long.”

He said he was, however, still happy with the original cut. “I’m happy enough with how it plays,” he tells Digital Spy when asked about an extended version.
“Whatever is missing, the film survives without it. This is, I think, the definitive cut of the film.
He also told the Hollywood Reporter at the time that “thirty scenes we cut out.”
He continued: “Nobody wants it to be a three hour movie, especially the distributor. But it was also the most important thing was pacing and finding that rhythm. The movie tells you what it needs to be.

“This was the best version of the movie. But the part of you that mourns the missing scenes, tells you to announce that it was three hours long.”

NME described the film as having “echoes of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining…in the way that it makes home, which should be the safest of places, feel alien and threatening.’ Read NME’s five star review of Hereditary here.