Mike Flanagan swore off franchises — now he wants Jaws and Jurassic Park too

The director who planned a career without sequels has a Carrie series out and an Exorcist on the way. Next on his wish list: Jaws, and dinosaurs that actually frighten people.

In a Reddit AMA on r/horror on 9 October 2026, hosted by Prime Video to promote his Carrie series, he made a confession:

"I spent a lot of my career thinking I wouldn't do franchises or sequels, and – whoops – but I really love getting to play in a world I know and respect and adore, and put my own spin on it."

— Mike Flanagan, Reddit AMA

Then came the wish list. "Honestly, I wish to hell I could make a JAWS movie," he wrote, because "no one will EVER get close to the original, but there is a ton of room for improvement on the sequels". And a Jurassic film "could be a blast too", on one condition: "I'd want to go really scary with it. A true dinosaur horror film would be a blast." He signed off the AMA to go and show the first Exorcist: Martyrs trailer at New York Comic Con. Whoops, indeed.

The franchise man who wasn't

For a director who didn't do franchises, the CV is filling up nicely. Hush and Midnight Mass were his own inventions. The list of other people's worlds is longer:

• 2016: Ouija: Origin of Evil, a prequel to a Hasbro board game film, released by Universal.
• 2019: Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining. It took $72.4 million worldwide on a $45 million budget, and Warner Bros. scrapped his planned Dick Hallorann prequel.
• 7 October 2026: Carrie, all eight episodes on Prime Video, with Summer H. Howell in the role Sissy Spacek made famous.
• 12 March 2027: The Exorcist: Martyrs, with Scarlett Johansson, after a year's delay from March 2026.
• Someday: The Dark Tower, planned as at least five series and two films, still not in production.

Asked about that last one in the same AMA, Flanagan said it was "looking really good", but launching it was "like building and launching an oil tanker (and then pushing it up a mountain)". Fair enough. Sharks are smaller.

The most upvoted reply on r/MikeFlanagan was blunter: "Mike please. Make something no one has made." Others had already cast Carla Gugino as narrator of a shark's point-of-view monologue.

Read more: Mike Flanagan wants a Jaws sequel — and a horror Jurassic Park sequel

Universal's PG-13 problem

There is one landlord for every door Flanagan is knocking on. Jaws and its three sequels, the last of which Michael Caine famously never watched but credited with paying for a house, are Universal's. So is Jurassic, and so is the new Exorcist. He is effectively pitching his current employer.

That employer has kept all seven Jurassic films at PG-13. The latest, Jurassic World Rebirth, earned its rating with "intense sequences of violence/action" and "bloody images", which is as far as a family dinosaur franchise goes. A "true dinosaur horror film" means people getting eaten slowly, on screen, and a certificate that keeps the under-15s out.

Flanagan wants to make dinosaurs scary again. Universal wants them to keep selling lunchboxes.

One commenter under Deadline's write-up put it more simply: "I'd be all for an R rated Jurassic but Universal would never do it. They want the PG-13 bucks."

There is no Jaws or Jurassic deal on the table, and Flanagan framed it as a wish, not a pitch. First comes Martyrs, Universal's second go at reviving The Exorcist after Believer in 2023. If it lands in March, the studio might hear out his shark ideas. A properly frightening Jurassic would need something stronger than a hit. It would need Universal to give up the family crowd, and the lunchboxes with them.

Read more: The Exorcist: Martyrs skips the 1973 original — the clue is on Scarlett Johansson's badge