The cult hack-and-slash Lollipop Chainsaw is roaring back, not just with a new game, but with an officially announced live-action feature film that serves as a prequel to the original story. The movie is described as an R-rated action comedy centered on chainsaw-wielding cheerleader Juliet Starling, set before the events of Grasshopper Manufacture’s 2012 cult favorite. Early reports also note that original scenario writer James Gunn, now busy reshaping DC’s film universe, is not currently attached to the project.
The film was unveiled during Dragami Games’ “Lollipop Chainsaw New Project” presentation at Tokyo Game Show 2026, where the studio laid out a broader revival plan for the franchise. Alongside the movie, Dragami has officially announced Lollipop Chainsaw 2 Back2Back, a sequel planned for PlayStation 5 in 2027 that returns Juliet to a rebuilt San Romero, now transformed into the film-industry metropolis Jaredwood. In the new game, Juliet is trapped inside a twisted zombie movie directed by a mysterious figure, battling “Corrupted Realm” zombies while trying to escape the production and uncover the conspiracy behind the chaos. Dragami has also teased separate anime plans, positioning Lollipop Chainsaw as a full-on multimedia franchise rather than a one-off cult curiosity.
On the film side, Dragami is partnering with an international producing team to push the adaptation as a “Hollywood” style project aimed at worldwide audiences. Producers include Ambitious Entertainment’s Kirk Shaw, former ZDF Studios drama executive Robert Franke, Nada Holdings founder Joe Teng, Throne Inc. managing director Takafumi Yūki, and Non Stop TV president Patricio Rabuffetti, forming a cross-border lineup spanning North America, Europe, and Asia. According to early coverage sourced from Deadline, the movie is explicitly positioned as a prequel and “envisioned as an R-rated action comedy,” keeping the game’s mix of bubblegum pop aesthetics and over-the-top gore intact. As of now, there is no confirmed director, cast, or distributor, and Dragami has framed the project as being in early development with more details to come.
The synopsis released so far suggests a story that doubles down on the game’s cheerleader-vs-zombies hook: a catastrophic undead outbreak engulfs Juliet’s high school, forcing her to carve a path through zombies to save her friends and family while finding a very unconventional way to keep her boyfriend Nick close. That setup mirrors the original game’s gleeful mashup of teen-movie tropes, grindhouse splatter, and tongue-in-cheek humor, all of which helped Lollipop Chainsaw stand out in a crowded action-game market back in 2012. The producers and Dragami have emphasized that they want to capture “what makes Lollipop Chainsaw special” while still embracing the chance to tell a new story, suggesting the film will riff on familiar motifs without simply retreading the game beat-for-beat.
For longtime fans, the biggest question mark is the absence—at least for now—of original creative leads like director Goichi Suda (Suda51) and writer James Gunn, whose sensibilities defined the game’s gleefully tasteless tone. Gunn has previously cited his work on Lollipop Chainsaw as an influence on the candy-colored gore and “Harley-vision” aesthetic of The Suicide Squad, underscoring how important the game was to his genre-mashing style. Current reporting notes that neither Gunn nor Suda are attached in any capacity, implying the movie will chart its own creative path under a new team while still mining the same cheerleader-versus-zombie mythology. With a sequel game, anime, and now a live-action prequel film all on the horizon, Lollipop Chainsaw is shifting from cult oddity to fully revived franchise—and Juliet Starling looks poised to become one of geek culture’s most unlikely cross-media comeback stories.
