’90s TV icon James Van Der Beek, who passed away on February 11, 2026, at the age of 48, continued acting during the years after he was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2023. And his final film, the crime thriller The Gates, will hit theater on March 13.

In The Gates, three young men get lost inside a gated community looking for a shortcut home after a night out. When they can’t operate the exit gate to leave the community, they approach a house for help — and witness Jacob, Van Der Beek’s character, murder a woman in cold blood.

In addition to being a killer, Jacob is also a sinister religious leader, who rallies the gated community’s other members to trap and hunt down the only witnesses to his crime. “Inside these gates, I’m a god,” his character intones in voiceover in the trailer.

Also starring Mason Gooding (Scream 7), Algee Smith (Euphoria, Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit) and Keith Powers (Straight Outta Compton) and directed by John Burr, the film is scheduled for theatrical release on March 13, 2026.

The Gates is one of the rare projects where Van Der Beek — who played a lovable aspiring filmmaler on Dawson’s Creek, an inspiring high school football player in Varsity Blues, and a charming parody of himself on the comedy series Don’t Trust the B — took on a darker role. But it wasn’t the only time: he played drug dealer and budding young psychopath Sean Bateman (yes, brother of American Psycho‘s Patrick Bateman) in 2002’s The Rules of Attraction, in an attempt to get viewers to see a side of his talent that wasn’t apparent on Dawson’s Creek. According to Rolling Stone, at the time, Van Der Beek explained his decision to take on the role by noting, ““Everyone said I was trying to change my image, but I didn’t look at it that way. It was the best unmade script I’d ever seen, and it meant I didn’t have to play the same character I’d been playing for five years.”

He also played drug-addled Matt Bromley on the first season of FX’s Pose, a villainous coworker of Evan Peters’ Stan Bowes, who attempts to reveal Stan’s infidelities to his wife Patty after Stan tries to outshine Matt at work.

The Gates isn’t Van Der Beek’s only work scheduled for posthumous release. He will also appear in the Legally Blonde prequel series Elle, which follows the high school years of franchise protagonist Elle Woods, and will premiere on Prime Video on July 1, 2026. Van Der Beek, who portrays Dean Wilson, will appear alongside newcomer Lexi Minetree as Elle, Grace and Frankie‘s June Diane Raphael as Eva Woods, Elle’s mother, and fellow ’90s icon Tom Everett Scott as Wyatt Woods, Elle’s father.