There are those who would kill for a breakthrough movie role. Then there's Maxine Minx.

Mia Goth returns to her role as the murderous adult film star in the first trailer for MaXXXine, the buzzed-about third entry in director Ti West's popular horror trilogy. No more shooting amateur porn videos in a reclusive barn. It's the big leagues for Goth's Maxine as she heads to Hollywood to become a bonafide movie star.

The year is 1985, six years after the events of West's first entry, X. Maxine gets her big break starring in a film called The Puritan II from director Elizabeth Bender (The Crown Emmy nominee Elizabeth Debecki). But there are a few things that threaten her dream of becoming famous.

First, there's a serial killer on the loose in Los Angeles nicknamed the Night Stalker. Maxine knows three of the victims, who all died within three days. That puts her on the radar of two detectives (Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale). Might the Night Stalker and Maxine be one and the same?

Then there's a private detective (Kevin Bacon), who's been hired by someone pretty powerful to track Maxine down. Our guess is that it's Maxine's father, who we found out from X is a popular televangelist (Simon Prast). "The past ain't finished with you," the P.I. warns. "It's gonna keep knockin' at your door."

The trailer also highlights a scene shot at the old Bates Motel set on the Universal Studios lot used to film various Psycho movies. (Appropriate for an aspiring horror film star like Maxine.) We also see highlights of the supporting cast around Goth, including Moses Sumney, Halsey, Lily Collins (playing Maxine's costar in The Puritan II), and Giancarlo Esposito.

West released X as the first movie in this saga in 2022, introducing Goth's Maxine as a porn actress whose amateur crew rents out a guesthouse on a remote farm to shoot a smut film. They are soon picked off one by one by the farm's unhinged owners, the elderly Pearl and Howard. Maxine, who suspiciously looks identical to Pearl when she was younger, gets away in the end.

West shot X and the trilogy's second entry, prequel Pearl (also released in 2022), back to back. "If I'd had the forethought ahead of time, and I could have written three in a row, we probably would have done it," West previously told Entertainment Weekly. "Unfortunately, I'm a bit of a slacker, and I could only come up with two." Goth returned in that film, as well, to play the younger Pearl to chronicle the slasher antics of her youth on the family farm in 1918.

MaXXXine hits theaters on July 5. Watch the trailer above.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content: