We’ve been enjoying a horror Renaissance for years now, but it felt like the bloody floodgates really opened in 2025. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Zach Cregger’s Weapons took two very different approaches to demonstrating what was possible with an auteur’s vision and a decent budget: while Sinners elevated the vampire invasion movie into a lush period piece full of musical sequences and racial commentary, Weapons leaned hard into supernatural horror while using a Magnolia-esque structure. Both were major successes at the Academy Awards, with Weapons’ Amy Madigan taking home a surprising Best Supporting Actress award for her portrayal of the wig-wearing, child-manipulating Aunt Gladys.
Now, Aunt Gladys is transitioning from villain to protagonist in Cregger’s new prequel movie, and we already have a (working) title for the upcoming project.
According to Variety, Zach Cregger and Krampus screenwriter Zach Shields will team up on a project currently titled, appropriately enough, Gladys. The prequel is reportedly based on an origin story included in an early draft of Weapons that would have shown how Aunt Gladys came into her powers, before being cut.
The title may seem obvious, but it does give us an inkling of what’s to come. Because it’s not called Aunt Gladys, it will presumably be set when she was a young woman, before she became, well, an aunt. It appears that Gladys has had her powers for decades, suggesting it will probably be a period piece. But which period? Our biggest clue lies in how Gladys dresses in gaudy tracksuits and shirts with big brooches and bigger collars: it sure seems like she came of age in the 1980s and hasn’t changed her wardrobe since.
The addition of Shields as a writer might also signal something about Gladys. While Weapons was an atmospheric, modern horror mystery, Shields’ past work on Krampus suggests this prequel will take a more folk-horror tone, as would be expected about a woman learning to control minds by breaking a stick in half over a bowl of water. When and where these powers originated will be the mystery Gladys solves, and as much as we can speculate, there are sure to be more surprises in store.
