Lionsgate is taking another swing at the Leprechaun franchise, this time with horror screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan on script duty. Deadline reported the project exclusively on 7 August 2026, confirming that the duo — whose credits span four entries in the Saw series plus The Collector, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and Unhuman — will write the new film for the studio.

Oren Koules and Miles Koules are set to produce through their Koulest Productions banner. Oren Koules brings a deep Lionsgate relationship: he produced all ten films in the Saw series, which grossed over $1 billion at the worldwide box office. Dan Heffner and Ketura Kestin will executive produce.

The plot is being kept under wraps. No director is attached to the new iteration, and no release date has been set.

This is Lionsgate's second attempt at reviving the property in the space of a few years. In 2024, filmmaker Felipe Vargas was attached to direct a previous Leprechaun take from a script by Mike Van Waes, with Roy Lee and Miri Yoon producing. That version did not move forward. The current project, with Melton and Dunstan writing and the Koules team producing, represents a fresh start.

The Leprechaun series is, by Lionsgate's own count, the longest-running franchise in the studio's history — a lineage that predates Lionsgate's ownership of the property. Writer-director Mark Jones launched the original film in 1993, with Warwick Davis playing the vengeful title creature across six of the franchise's eight entries. Jennifer Aniston, early in her career, co-starred in that first film. Lionsgate gained control of the franchise when it acquired Trimark Pictures in 2000.

The series has run through eight films released between 1993 and 2018. The most recent theatrical-era entries include 2014's Leprechaun: Origins, directed by Zach Lipovsky, and 2018's Leprechaun Returns.

For Lionsgate, the appeal is straightforward. The studio has built a reliable business in mid-budget horror — a genre where established titles carry built-in audience recognition and modest production costs can yield outsized returns. Pairing a long-held franchise with writers who helped sustain the Saw series for nearly a decade is a bet that the formula can travel to a different monster.

No production start date has been announced.