Justin Hardy died on Friday, 1 August 2026, of a heart attack, aged 61. His family described him as 'so full of life right to the end, and incredibly energised to be working towards premiering his latest film this month.' The film — Wrath of the Gods, the concluding chapter of the Wicker Man trilogy — has its world premiere at FrightFest in London on 28 August. He will not be there. Hardy was a working British filmmaker with 45 directing credits across dramas, documentaries, and romcoms for cinema and television. He was nominated for a BAFTA for The Relief of Belsen (2007), a feature-length BBC drama about the liberation of the concentration camp, starring Corin and Gemma Redgrave. He also directed historical documentaries including Princes in the Tower, Trafalgar Battle Surgeon, and Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen for BBC, Channel 4, and CNN. He taught screenwriting at University College London. His father, Robin Hardy, directed The Wicker Man in 1973 — the film Peter Bradshaw called 'virtually a one-movie genre in itself' when it was rereleased for its 50th anniversary in 2023, and which the Guardian ranked fourth on its all-time horror list in 2010. Edward Woodward plays a devout Christian police officer investigating a disappearance on a fictional Scottish island ruled by a pagan priest played by Christopher Lee. Robin Hardy returned to the universe with The Wicker Tree in 2011. In 2024, Justin co-wrote and directed Children of the Wicker Man, a documentary made with his brother Dominic about their father's making of the original film — including the uncredited role their mother played in its production and the toll the project took on the family. That film set the stage for Wrath of the Gods, which the brothers wrote after discovering story concepts, scripts, and storyboards in their father's archives, found in the attic of the former family home. Wrath of the Gods was filmed in Shetland. It stars Norwegian actor Christiane Schaldemose as a woman who returns to a North Sea island to bury her husband after his suicide. When children begin disappearing, the locals cast her out as a symbol of bad luck and evil. Dominic Hardy described the finished film as 'incredibly beautiful' and 'a distinctively new creative statement from so seasoned a filmmaker.' He last saw his brother on 17 July. Justin, he said, was looking forward to a future devoted entirely to writing scripts. Hardy is survived by his wife Larissa and their four children. The FrightFest premiere on 28 August proceeds. His family says they are 'heartbroken he won't be with us at his premiere.' What makes this story sit differently from a standard obituary is the specific shape of what Hardy was doing: not cashing in on his father's name but spending years excavating it honestly — first the documentary reckoning with the family cost of The Wicker Man, then the archival work that produced a final chapter using his father's own undiscovered material. Whether Wrath of the Gods is good or not, it is the end of something. The premiere on 28 August will be the first and last time Justin Hardy's completed trilogy exists in the world with him absent from it.
