One of the most unforgettable and disgusting kills in the Terrifier franchise (which is saying a lot) happens in the first movie. After a creepy encounter in a pizza shop, Art the Clown kidnaps two girls and makes one watch as he slices the other in half while she’s suspended upside down. Now, the woman whose character endured that violent end is suing the filmmakers over royalties and working conditions.
Catherine Corcoran, who played Dawn in the original 2016 Terrifier, filed a lawsuit this week “accusing the producers of the film of breach of contract over her backend deal for one percent of all profits,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. In the complaint, it says Corcoran was paid the $100 daily rate, which was SAG minimum at the time, but also signed a deal that entitled her to “1% of profits generated from Terrifier,” which reportedly included box office, streaming, live events, merchandise, and more. That probably didn’t seem like much in 2016, but after the release of sequels in 2022 and 2024, it’s significant.
Corcoran, whose likeness also appears briefly in Terrifier 2, apparently received about $17,000 in royalties after the release of 2022’s Terrifier 2, which grossed almost $16 million at the global box office, but didn’t receive anything from the release of 2024’s Terrifier 3, which grossed over $90 million. “This case presents an all-too-common story of low-budget film producers taking advantage of a young actress through fraud, sexual harassment, and, ultimately, betrayal,” the complaint says.
“Damien [Leone, director] and Phil [Falcone, producer] deny the claims in the complaint and will vigorously defend this lawsuit,” their lawyer said in a statement.
To complicate things even further, in addition to the breach of contract, Corcoran’s complaint alleges that she “wasn’t told ahead of shooting that she would be fully nude in the scene in which she’s killed in violation of SAG rules, which require producers to obtain written consent from talent for such sequences.” It also “details allegedly grueling working conditions during filming,” during which she had to be hung by her ankles in 40-second increments over 10 hours. Doctors later told the actress she “suffered cranial swelling and eardrum damage as a result of being upside down.”
The Terrifier franchise is a significant one in modern horror because it did something that few franchises have done in a long, long time: create a true horror icon. Art the Clown has reached the level of Jigsaw, Chucky, and others in that pantheon of more modern slasher horror stars, and a large part of that is because of that first movie. Fans of the first film helped get the second one made, which was then so successful that the third one got a wide theatrical release. A fourth film is currently in development.
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