Since the mid-2000s, West has made low-budget genre fare, but prior to X, he hadn’t directed a feature since 2016’s In a Valley of Violence for Blumouse, opting for a change of pace on genre TV in the intervening years.

But in late 2020, he partnered with A24 to produce and distribute the Mia Goth-led X, leading to early 2021 shoot in New Zealand.

Set in 1979, X follows amateur porn stars and pornographers who film an X-rated movie inside an elderly couple’s boarding house on their secluded Texas farm.

Goth, in a dual role, plays an aspiring porn star named Maxine Mink, and the presence of her and her collaborators sends the property’s unhinged older farmwife, Pearl (also Goth), into a  jealous, homicidal rage. West and Goth’s initial collaboration went so well that they decided to immediately turn Pearl’s backstory into a full-fledged prequel known as Pearl.

As soon as they wrapped photography on X, West and Goth began production on the 1918-set Pearl in secret.

The homage to 1950s technicolor melodramas chronicles Pearl as a farmer’s daughter during the Spanish Flu pandemic.

Her husband Howard is overseas fighting in World War I, and so she’s isolated in more ways than one on her family farm with her ailing father and strict German mother. The film ultimately shows how Pearl’s broken dreams and unsound mind served as the catalyst for her first of many murders to come.

Set six years after Maxine narrowly survived Pearl and Howard’s farmhouse massacre, the story picks back up with her as a fairly successful pornstar in Los Angeles. She begins the film with a mighty impressive audition for a horror sequel, setting up the mainstream and crossover opportunity she’s been chasing. But just as her dreams are on the verge of coming true, a shadowy killer begins to target Maxine and those around her due to her involvement in the 1979 massacre.

Greater Pressure and Expectations

“I did feel more pressure, but you get so inundated with the here and now that you can’t worry about it too much. I just really wanted to make sure that I felt like I stuck the landing,” West says.

Besides cementing Goth as a bona fide leading lady, West’s trilogy worked with two rising stars right before they were both launched into the stratosphere. First up was Jenna Ortega in X, which released in between Scream (2022) and Wednesday season one, sending her straight to the A-list.

In Pearl, Goth’s title character had deadly affair with the local movie theater’s projectionist, and he was played by David Corenswet, the new Superman-Clark Kent in James Gunn’s upcoming Superman (2025).

Prior to his career-altering casting, West received character reference calls about his experience with Corenswet, as DC Studios and others were doing their diligence before signing the Pennsylvanian actor.

“I did get some calls when Corenswet was up for Superman. People were snooping around about him for that, and I wholeheartedly endorsed him. He deserves every bit of it, and I’m so excited to see Superman,” West shares.

West has not ruled out a return to the X-verse. MaXXXine leaves  loose thread or two should he ever have the desire to tell future stories, but at the moment, he and Goth both need a break after nearly four years of perpetual work.

West also recalls the audition story of X’s intimacy coordinator for a standout role in Pearl, before explaining how MaXXXine’s prosthetic mold scene was partially informed by Goth’s own real-life prosthetic mishap.