Lionsgate Hands Leprechaun to the Saw Writers

Lionsgate is developing a new Leprechaun movie, and the studio has hired Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan to write it.

Deadline broke the news on August 7, with Bloody Disgusting reporting the details the same day. Oren Koules and Miles Koules are producing through their Koulest Productions banner. The plot is being kept under wraps, which at this stage of development usually means there is not much plot to keep.

“After producing all the Saw films, and twenty-three wonderful years at Lionsgate, I’m thrilled to be working again with the Lionsgate team, Patrick and Marcus, and my son, Miles, on a terrifying new way into the rich world of Leprechaun,” Oren Koules told Deadline.

That is the entire announcement. A studio, two writers, two producers and a quote.

The Saw and Collector Writers Have the Gold

Melton and Dunstan are not a random hire, and horror readers will already know the shape of their filmography.

Melton and Dunstan met at the University of Iowa, and their screenplay Feast later won the third season of Project Greenlight, which put John Gulager’s film in front of cameras in 2005 and led to two sequels. From there they went straight into the Saw franchise and stayed, writing Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI and Saw 3D across four consecutive years. In between they built their own thing with The Collector in 2009 and The Collection in 2012, both directed by Dunstan, both about a masked man who turns entire buildings into hardware. They also share story credit on 2019’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and have continued working together on films including The Neighbor and Unhuman.

Handing a homicidal leprechaun to the men who spent half a decade designing ways for people to come apart in confined spaces is, at minimum, a specific choice.

Nobody has said what this film will be, and a writing credit is not a tonal promise. But the Saw sequels and the Collector films share a quality that matters for this particular property. They are extremely mean and they are not humorless, which is a rarer combination than it sounds and close to the only register in which Leprechaun has ever worked.

This Leprechaun Has Already Had One Development Life

Lionsgate has been here before, recently.

In June 2023 the studio announced a Leprechaun film with Felipe Vargas directing from a screenplay by Mike Van Waes, with Roy Lee and Miri Yoon producing through Vertigo Entertainment. Vargas, known for the award-winning short Milk Teeth, later told Splattercast he wanted the film to be “scary as hell and also hilarious” and described it as a reinvention of the franchise. Reporting at the time indicated Warwick Davis was not expected to reprise the role.

That version stalled. In March 2025, Bloody Disgusting reported that Vargas was no longer directing, though its report at the time framed the project as continuing under a new director, still built on Van Waes’s screenplay with Lee producing.

How Friday’s news connects to that is genuinely unclear, and it is worth saying so rather than filling the gap. The new report describes a brand new Leprechaun movie with different writers and different producers, and characterizes the Vargas project as one that “would not be moving forward,” which is a firmer statement than the 2025 report made. Nobody has said whether Melton and Dunstan are writing from scratch, rewriting Van Waes, or working an entirely separate idea. Nobody has said whether Roy Lee, Miri Yoon or Vertigo remain attached in any capacity. For now the clearest description is that Lionsgate is again developing a Leprechaun movie, after the version announced in 2023 failed to move forward.

Leprechaun Has Never Needed Respectability

The franchise began in 1993 with Mark Jones’s original, which starred Warwick Davis as the title character and gave Jennifer Aniston her first feature role. Five Davis sequels followed, and they got stranger as they went: Leprechaun 4 put him in space, Leprechaun in the Hood and Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood moved him to Los Angeles.

Davis then left the role. Dylan Postl played the character in 2014’s Leprechaun: Origins, a straight-faced reboot that stripped out the puns and the personality. Linden Porco took over for 2018’s Leprechaun Returns, a direct sequel to the 1993 film and the last installment to date, eight years ago now.

Origins is the useful lesson in that run. It is the one that tried to make Leprechaun frightening by making it serious, and it is the one nobody defends. This is a franchise whose appeal is built out of elaborate kills, awful rhyming couplets, absurd settings and one actor going at it with total commitment. Solemnity has been tried and it did not take.

What Has Not Been Announced

No director is attached. Nobody has been cast, no official title has been announced, and neither a release date nor a production start has been set. Warwick Davis has not been announced in any capacity. When the previous iteration was announced in 2023, he was not expected to reprise the role. Whether this one is a sequel, a reboot or a continuation of anything has gone unmentioned.

Leprechaun has survived outer space, Las Vegas and two trips to the hood. Another lap through development is comparatively dignified.