{"id":1128146,"date":"2026-08-03T16:00:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T16:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1128146\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T16:00:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T16:00:29","slug":"justin-hardy-dies-the-wicker-man-sequel-director-was-age-61","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1128146\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Hardy Dies: \u2018The Wicker Man\u2019 Sequel Director Was Age 61"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tUK director and producer Justin Hardy<\/a> died of a heart attack on July 31, just weeks before the premiere of his sequel to late father Robin Hardy\u2019s 1973 cult folk horror The Wicker Man<\/a>. He was 61.<\/p>\n

\n\tHardy had recently completed Wrath of the Gods based on a long lost concept written by his father as the final feature in his The Wicker Man trilogy, following the original film and 2011 picture The Wicker Tree. It world premieres at Frightfest in London on August 28. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJustin was determined to complete his father\u2019s vision forThe Wicker Man in his final years,\u201d said publicist Ned Mansfield.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn in London on October 30, 1964, Hardy spent most of his directing and producing career making history and current affairs-based content.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis near 50-credits included the Primetime Emmy-nominated hybrid work The Last Dragon; Bafta-nominated The Relief of Belsen, and RTS winners such as City of Vice and Trafalgar Battle Surgeon.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn more recent years, Hardy focused on his father\u2019s legacy after the new owner of his former family home got in contact with the news that six sacks of his father\u2019s lost archive had been discovered untouched in the attic.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDominic and Justin Hardy with their late father\u2019s newly discovered personal archive<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRobin Keane<\/p>\n

\n\tHardy documented he and his half-brother Dominic Hardy\u2019s research into the material in the 2024 documentary and book Children of the Wicker Man.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe siblings went on to revive a lost original concept for a final film set in the world of The Wicker Man and shot entirely in Shetland discovered in their father\u2019s papers.<\/p>\n

\n\tHardy directed from a new original story co-written with Dominic Hardy, honoring their father\u2019s memory by returning to Shetland for the film starring Francis Magee (Game of Thrones) and Norwegian actress Christiane Schaldemose.<\/p>\n

\n\tSchaldemose plays grieving widow Anna who returns to Hel Island to bury her late husband after his suicide, and is promptly cast out by the eccentric locals for being a symbol of bad luck and evil. When children start going missing the island is forced to reckon with its dark history of familial abuse and
the terrifying beast-like forces of the sea.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe half brothers dedicated the upcoming release to Justin\u2019s mother Caroline Hardy after it came to light in the discovered archive that she had been a secret, uncredited executive producer on The Wicker Man. She died in 1984 at the age of 51.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UK director and producer Justin Hardy died of a heart attack on July 31, just weeks before the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1128147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,307048,14062,23502,307049,16,15,307050],"class_list":["post-1128146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-justin-hardy","tag-novid","tag-obituary","tag-the-wicker-man","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wrath-of-the-gods"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117032416667398341","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1128146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1128147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1128146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1128146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1128146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}