Lollipop Chainsaw Is Back: The Sequel, the Movie, and the Anime, All Confirmed at TGS 2026

Lollipop Chainsaw spent fourteen years as one of those cult games people brought up wistfully at parties — a Suda51-directed, James Gunn-written oddity about a cheerleader zombie hunter that never got a sequel, a remaster that stuck around, or much of anything beyond a 2012 release and a small but loud fanbase. That changed inside a single week at Tokyo Game Show 2026. Dragami Games didn't just announce a sequel. It announced a sequel, a live-action movie, and an anime, across separate reveals within days of each other, turning a mostly-dormant IP into a full three-pronged franchise relaunch seemingly overnight.

Here's everything that's actually been confirmed across all three announcements, and just as importantly, what hasn't.

The Game: Lollipop Chainsaw 2 Back2Back

Dragami Games revealed the sequel at a dedicated TGS 2026 "Funtime SHOW" stage livestream. Its title is, unambiguously, Lollipop Chainsaw 2 Back2Back — a name that leans into the original's willingness to be a little ridiculous rather than sanding that edge off for a "prestige sequel" rebrand. It's confirmed for PlayStation 5, with a 2027 release window and no firm date attached yet.

That 2027 window matters context-wise. This isn't a game that's shipping in the next few months off the back of a single trailer; it's an early-stage reveal meant to establish that the project exists and is real, not a launch-imminent showcase. Everything else Dragami has shown so far should be read with that in mind.

Who's Actually Making It

The director is Hajime Tabata, best known as the director of Final Fantasy XV. His studio, JP Universe, is developing Lollipop Chainsaw 2 Back2Back in partnership with Dragami Games and Taiwan-based Nada Holdings. That's a notably different pedigree than the original game had — Tabata's background is in large-scale, narrative-heavy action RPGs, not the irreverent, B-movie horror-comedy tone Lollipop Chainsaw built its identity around, which makes the returning original talent below feel less like a formality and more like a deliberate effort to keep the sequel tethered to what made the first game work.

Two names from the 2012 original are confirmed back. Masahiro Yuki, who co-produced and wrote the scenario for the original Lollipop Chainsaw, returns to write the sequel. NekoshowguN, the original character concept artist, is also returning. Having the writer and character artist back is a real continuity thread, and it's the strongest signal that Lollipop Chainsaw 2 Back2Back is trying to feel like a genuine continuation rather than a reboot wearing the old name.

The Notable Absence

Here's the part worth flagging plainly: neither James Gunn nor Goichi Suda (Suda51) has any confirmed involvement in the sequel. Gunn wrote the original's script, and Suda directed it through Grasshopper Manufacture — between the two of them, they're responsible for most of what gave the first game its specific, gleefully unhinged tone. Their absence doesn't automatically mean the sequel will feel wrong, especially with Yuki and NekoshowguN back to anchor the writing and character design. But it's a genuinely different creative core than the one that built the original, and it's the kind of gap that fans of the 2012 game are right to keep an eye on rather than assume away.

Story and Setting: Welcome to Jaredwood

The premise picks up with Juliet Starling, returning with a new outfit and, per the reveal, visibly "buffed up." She's been trapped by a mysterious director inside his own twisted zombie movie, in a location called Jaredwood — a rebuilt version of the original game's San Romero, reimagined as a film-industry metropolis. It's a clever structural hook: the original was already a loving, campy homage to zombie B-movies, and setting the sequel literally inside a movie being made lets Dragami lean into that meta layer even harder than the first game did.

Enemies in the sequel are being called "Corrupted Realm zombies," suggesting some kind of thematic or mechanical tie between the film-set setting and how the horde itself is framed. And Nick — Juliet's boyfriend, the talking severed head she's carried around since the original game's opening minutes — is confirmed to be returning as well, which is about as close to a mandatory character return as this franchise has.

Gameplay: Early, Unfinished, and Already Debated

What's actually playable right now is an early, unfinished build, and it's worth treating anything said about it as a first impression rather than a verdict. The combat mixes chainsaw attacks with cheerleading-style moves, continuing the original's central gimmick of grafting horror-movie gore onto peppy, pom-pom-adjacent choreography. New to the sequel is roller-skate traversal, giving Juliet a faster, more mobile way to move through Jaredwood than the original's more grounded combat loop allowed.

Red Reactions, which got hands-on time with the TGS demo, offered its own impressions of that build — and it's worth being clear this is one outlet's take on an unfinished demo, not a review of a finished game. According to Red Reactions, the build showed choppy animation and weak hit feedback, along with visuals that read as darker and more desaturated compared to the bright, saturated palette the original Lollipop Chainsaw was known for. None of that is unusual for an early TGS demo build running roughly a year out from release, but it's also not nothing — the original game's visual identity was as loud and colorful as its combat was silly, and a muddier palette would be a real tonal shift if it carries through to launch.

Who's Actually Publishing This?

This is genuinely unresolved across current coverage, and it's worth flagging rather than picking a side. GosuGamers lists Koei Tecmo as the publisher. Other coverage describes SEGA as having merely hosted the reveal stage rather than publishing the game itself, with the actual development partnership described as Dragami Games, Nada Holdings, and JP Universe. Those aren't necessarily contradictory — a game can have a developer partnership separate from whoever ends up distributing it — but nothing in current reporting definitively nails down who's publishing Lollipop Chainsaw 2 Back2Back, and treating either claim as settled fact right now would be getting ahead of what's actually confirmed.

The Movie: An R-Rated Prequel

Days after the game reveal, on Saturday, September 19, Dragami held a separate, dedicated "Lollipop Chainsaw New Project" livestream during TGS to announce a live-action movie. Per Deadline's reporting, cited by Anime News Network, it's being pitched as an R-rated action comedy, and it's set as a prequel taking place before the events of the original 2012 game.

The producer lineup is notably international and industry-heavy for a video game adaptation: Kirk Shaw of Ambitious Entertainment, who worked as an associate producer on The Hurt Locker; Robert Franke, the former VP of drama at ZDF Studios; Joe Teng, founder of Nada Holdings (the same company co-developing the sequel game); Takafumi Yūki of Throne Inc.; and Patricio Rabuffetti of Non Stop TV. The producers have stated their intent to make it a "Hollywood" film aimed at worldwide audiences, which, combined with the producer roster spanning American, German, and international production backgrounds, suggests Dragami is treating this less as a niche fan project and more as a genuine attempt at theatrical crossover appeal.

The Anime: The Least Detailed of the Three

Rounding out the relaunch, an anime series was also announced as the third prong of the Lollipop Chainsaw revival, alongside the game and the film. Both Anime News Network and GosuGamers confirm the anime exists as an announced project. That's about as far as current reporting goes, though — studio, format, and timeline are all thin or unspecified in coverage so far. It's the least fleshed-out of the three announcements by a wide margin, and there's not much to say about it beyond confirming it's real and part of the same push.

Why Announce All Three at Once

Three separate media announcements inside one week is an aggressive way to relaunch a franchise that's been dormant for over a decade, and it doesn't look accidental. Spreading the game, movie, and anime reveals across a compressed TGS window lets Dragami dominate multiple news cycles with the same underlying IP rather than betting everything on a single showcase moment. It also signals a level of confidence — or at least ambition — that goes beyond simply making a sequel nobody asked loudly enough for; Dragami and its partners are betting Lollipop Chainsaw can function as a genuine multimedia property, not just a one-off nostalgia cash-in.

Whether that bet pays off depends entirely on execution none of these reveals have actually shown yet. A choppy TGS demo build isn't a death sentence a year out from launch, a publisher mix-up is the kind of thing that tends to sort itself out as marketing ramps up, and an anime with zero concrete details attached is, at this stage, closer to a placeholder than a project. But the pieces are now publicly on the table in a way they simply weren't a month ago, and for a franchise that spent fourteen years as a cult curiosity rather than an active series, that alone is the headline.

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