Earlier today, we shared the awesome news that Gun Interactive, the company that previously brought us Friday the 13th: The Game, is working with Sumo Nottingham to make a video game based on the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (We also shared the trailer for the game, which you can see in the embed above.) Now Fangoria has revealed that genre icon Kane Hodder, who did all the motion capture work for Jason Voorhees in the F13 game (after playing the character in four movies), is now doing the motion capture work to bring Leatherface to life for the TCM game!
Fangoria’s Angel Melanson conducted a video interview with Hodder, and you can watch that in full below.
Hodder is a fitting choice to play Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre because he has actually played the character before; he handled the character’s stunt work in 1990’s Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. As he said during the interview,
I was stunt double for R.A. Mihailoff, who played the character, but I did quite a few scenes because there was a lot of scenes with a live chainsaw with a chain on it near the actors, so to cover themselves they had to have a stunt person do that.”
Original Leatherface performer Gunnar Hansen passed away in 2015, and Hodder feels that his performance in the game is a tribute to Hansen:
Gunnar was a friend of mine for many, many years. … The whole point is to try to make it reminiscent of Gunnar’s performance, because it’s the iconic one of all the films and the one everybody remembers. I feel almost like I’m doing him an honor. Instead of trying to take over his role or something, even though it’s a video game, I feel like I’m kind of doing it as a nod to him. ‘Hey, I miss ya.'”
Hodder also revealed that Leatherface isn’t the only killer in the game. Just like in the original movie, he’s going to have some family members working with him.
In this game there’s more than one killer that you can play as. … As a gamer, I would find it fascinating to be able to play as different family members that are doing killing as well. So it’s not just one killer, you have to watch your back everywhere.”
He didn’t name names, but hinted that the actors doing the motion capture for the other killers do have history with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise… So now we can start speculating, who are these actors playing the other killers? Is Edwin Neal playing the Hitchhiker again? Could John Dugan be doing motion capture for Grandpa? Maybe Bill Moseley is playing the late Jim Siedow’s character The Cook, like he did in Texas Chainsaw 3D… We’ll have to wait and see, and I am anxious to find out.
Gun and Sumo’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is “an asymmetrical multiplayer horror experience for PC and ninth generation gaming consoles”. Fans can follow TXChainSawGame on Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for news and to interact with the community.