We heard a couple of weeks back that Terrifier 2, was getting its own novelisation ahead of the theatrical release of Terrifier 3.
We caught up with author Tim Waggoner, to talk all things Art The Clown and beyond.
Can you tell when you were approached about working on the Terrifier 2 novelisation?
Brad Miska and Tom Owen at Bloody Disgusting first emailed me in June 2023. Brad explained that Bloody Disgusting/Cineverse were starting a line of novelizations, and he asked if I’d be interested in writing the novelization of Terrifier 2. I stared at the email for several moments, unable to quite believe what I was seeing. I was – and still am – a fan of Terrifier and Terrifier 2, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to write Art the Clown. Plus, the second film has such well-developed characters and a strong emotional core, and I knew I’d enjoy exploring those aspects of the story too. The book was an absolute blast to write!
You have a rich pedigree with Halloween Kills and others recently, how much of a challenge was Terrifier 2?
It was challenging in a couple ways. The first was that Cineverse wanted the novel to be 100K words long. The average movie script only provides enough material to write a 50K word novel, and even a longer movie like Terrifier 2 still didn’t have enough story to reach 100K words. This meant I had to invent quite a bit of new material for the book. Luckily, Brad and Tom liked the all the new stuff, and the only thing they asked me to remove was the last line of the book. At the end, I hinted at how Art would regenerate between the second and third movies, and I’d guessed wrong about how it would happen. The other big challenge was that the film is such a visual experience, both in terms of David Howard Thornton’s performance as Art and the gory special effects and trying to capture those aspects of the movie using only words took some work!
What was your first reaction to watching Terrifier 2?
I watched Terrifier when it was first released on streaming. I knew nothing about it, and I was blown away by the combination of intense extreme horror and dark humour. My oldest daughter Devon is in her late twenties, and she’s always been my horror movie-watching buddy. I texted her and told her to watch Terrifier. She did and immediately fell in love with Art. So when Terrifier 2 came out in theatres, we saw it together. I purposely avoided spoilers online so I didn’t know much about the story going in. I did know that audience members who’d seen the film had become nauseated and some even vomited, so I was curious to see if the extreme elements would bother me, since I’ve been a horror fan all my life. I was also curious to see how the long runtime would affect the film. I was surprised and impressed by the much greater emphasis on character than in the first film, and I loved the surreal aspects, like the Clown Café. I also liked how things weren’t always explained. I love when there’s a lingering sense of mystery after a book or movie ends. I was impressed by the balls-to-the-wall gore, as well as the creativity of the different kills. I also felt like Art truly came into his own as a modern horror icon in the film. I only got queasy once, and that was when the boys on the playground were poking the dead raccoon’s guts with a stick. I grew up in the country, and seeing dead animals was a common thing, so I guess there was an element of realism in that scene for me that I wasn’t prepared for.
This is quite extreme horror, was it fun to write about the gorier elements?
It was! My original horror fiction is usually a combination of dark fantasy and extreme horror, so I’m no stranger when it comes to writing blood-soaked scenes. The challenge with the gore in the novel was to try to give it the same impact as it has in the film, as well as honouring the characters’ suffering. I wrote these scenes from the victims’ point of view, not only to make the gory elements more impactful but because I believe that even in entertainment-focused horror fiction, it’s important to present violence and its effects as responsibly as possible.
How do you intend to expand the lore of Terrifier and Art the Clown?
When you write media tie-in fiction, you’re limited in what you can do with the IP. Plus, you can’t add lore that will be contradicted by the next film in the series (as happened with the last line of my novel). I did write the history of the Terrifier attraction, and I added material that expanded the characters’ backgrounds. I expanded the role of the Little Pale Girl and hinted that she was connected to a much greater evil force (this was entirely a guess on my part, based on hints in the script). I added a bit to the mythology of the Clown Café and Sienna’s abilities. I added that Art is drawn to places and objects with dark histories. There are other elements I added, but I can’t give away everything! Nothing I added should be considered canon as far as the films go, however. The only things that are truly canon are what Damien Leone puts on the screen.
How does Art compare to Michael Myers in terms of writing the character?
The challenge with Michael was that there’s no way to know if he’s self-aware, at least in the way we conceive of self-awareness. And because he always wears a mask, he has no visible facial expressions to indicate what he might be thinking or feeling. I wrote scenes from Michael’s point of view, but I wrote him the way I would write a shark’s consciousness, focusing primarily on stimulus and response while striving to preserve that liminal quality Michael has of being a creature that walks an undefined line between the real world and the paranormal. Like Michael, Art doesn’t speak, but he does communicate quite a lot nonverbally like a mime would. Trying to indicate that using words rather than images was challenging, as was giving a sense of Art’s personality using only language. Luckily, Terrifier 2 was available on streaming as I was working on the book, so I could watch it and take inspiration from David Howard Thorton’s masterful performance.
We have Terrifier 3 coming up this October, have there been any murmurs about a novelisation of this?
I recently finished Terrifier 3 and turned it into Brad! I’m anxious to find out what he thinks of it!
What else do you have in the pipeline?
My latest short story collection Old Monsters Never Die was recently released. In terms of finished work yet to come out, Terrifier 3, as I mentioned, as well as The Desolation War, the concluding volume in my Custodians of the Cosmos series, is a mash-up of urban fantasy and horror. I’ve written novelizations for Ti West’s X Trilogy. X and Pearl are finished and will come out in September and November, respectively. I’m currently working on MaXXXine, and it’s due out early in 2025. The plan is for me to write the novelization of the first Terrifier movie too, but I haven’t been offered a contract yet. If I get to do the book, I hope they let me connect the first movie to the other two, so they all read like one huge story!
Pre-order Terrifier 2 by Tim Waggoner on Amazon.
Bloody Flicks 