Maxxxine director is up for another film but ‘cautious to mess up’ X trilogy

Watch: Maxxxine director Ti West discusses making more films in the X universe

The X film franchise was never meant to become one, but with the overwhelmingly powerful response the first movie got from fans it quickly became a trilogy, and director Ti West tells Yahoo UK he'd "never say never" to doing more.

The Mia Goth-led movies began in 2022 with X, the shocking slasher about an adult movie crew being massacred at the farm they booked to film in, and was quickly followed by Pearl, a prequel about the woman who went on to commit the killings in the original. Maxxxine follows the sole survive of the event, Maxine Minx, as she tries to make it in Hollywood as the Night Stalker preys on women in Los Angeles.

Maxxxine brings the titular character's story to a close, for now, but West will always remain open to returning to the world given its history: "It was really just meant to be one movie in the beginning and then it just turned into this, and so I'm very proud of the three movies.

"I'm cautious to mess it up, but you know in many ways I wanted Maxxxine and all of the movies to be standalone films by themselves — they're enriched if you've seen all three of them, but you don't need to see all three.

"And I wanted the ending of Maxxxine to be the appropriate ending to the movie Maxxxine, but also to feel like a conclusion of all three movies thematically, and that was a little harder.

"I shouldn't say harder, it was more pressure on myself because the first two movies we made back-to-back and no one knew we were even making them, this movie people did know and there were fans at that point and they were waiting for it. So to try to wrap up not only the story, but to wrap up the thematics of all three is a different challenge and I think that was part of what was exciting to me, to take on that challenge.

Read more: Mia Goth is 'fearless' in Maxxxine, director Ti West says

"So if we were to do anything more with these movies I would just want to find a different way into it, because I think that we went about as far as we could with with these three stories, but never say never."

When Yahoo suggests that West could explore something with Lily Collins' character in Maxxxine, an actor who stars in a horror movie called The Puritan, West responds well: "I love Lily, so I'd be happy to make it.

"I mean the thing is in about two weeks I'm free of having to think about anything related to like the X universe at all, and that will be the first time in five years that that's been the case. So I would love to just wake up and have like a week off, you know, and then we'll think about what's next.

"Could it be something in the world of all this? Sure, but maybe it's something else and then [I'll] come back to it later. Who knows? It's very strange to be on this side of it for the first time."

Maxxxine is out in cinemas now.