Wicker Man sequel director Justin Hardy dies aged 61
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- Justin Hardy died on Friday night aged 61 after suffering a heart attack, his family confirmed, remembering him as 'a man of family, of boundless creativity'
- Hardy had just completed production on Wrath of the Gods, the concluding chapter of a Wicker Man trilogy that was due to premiere in London later this month — a film his family said he would never get to see open
- Wrath of the Gods was inspired by recently discovered scripts and storyboards by Hardy's late father Robin, completing a trilogy that began with the 1973 original The Wicker Man and the 2011 follow-up The Wicker Tree
- Hardy co-directed the 2024 documentary Children of the Wicker Man with his brother Dominic, chronicling the legacy of their father's iconic Christopher Lee-starring film
- A Bafta and Emmy nominated writer and director, Hardy also directed historical documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and CNN including Princes In The Tower, Trafalgar Battle Surgeon, The Relief Of Belsen and Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen
- Hardy taught screenwriting at University College London and is survived by his wife Larissa and their four children; brother Dominic said they had 'lost that larger-than-life presence looking over us all'
Why it matters: Hardy's death comes just as he was about to deliver the third and final chapter of the Wicker Man trilogy built on his father's rediscovered scripts — leaving his family and the production to premiere a film the director himself never got to see open, closing a multigenerational creative project in his absence.
