Connecting the dots between Halloween films is a complicated affair that’s about to get even messier. In a franchise already populated with reboots, retcons and abruptly abandoned plot threads, Blumhouse Productions’ upcoming sequel is set to disregard everything in the series timeline except for John Carpenter’s classic 1978 original, including the famous sibling twist of 1981’s Halloween II.
But in a interview published this week with The Hollywood Reporter, writer-director David Gordon Green suggested that the next Halloween was originally planned to slot in more neatly with the various sequels that came before.
“We started incorporating all the follow-ups and then it got overwhelming trying to engineer something that made sense. Some of the plot points became a little stretched thin as the franchise went on. And so ultimately finding those frustrations, McBride came to me and just said, ‘What’s the Michael Myers movie that you really want to see?’ Halloween I was, to me, the most pure and, in a lot of ways, the most simple. I get the real connection with the terror of a movie that isn’t so lost in its own mythology.”
Green’s plan for a direct sequel to Laurie’s first encounter with Myers was further encouraged by a meeting with the original Halloween’s director, who’ll also be scoring the soundtrack for the next film.
“Once we kind of had a concept of eliminating Halloween 2 and beyond, that’s when we went over to Carpenter’s house, which was a lovely picnic, and nervously presented our ideas to him. Through the course of that very suspicious conversation, [we] saw him go from cross-eyed to big smiles and then that gave us the confidence to move forward pretty quickly and then try to get Jamie Lee Curtis, [original star Nick Castle] and Carpenter himself to do the music. The next wave of ambition kicked in once we, as I like to say, we kissed the ring of the Godfather and he gave us the thumbs up.”
We’ll see if the new Halloween was worth all the fuss when the film arrives on October 19th, 2018. Before then, though, be sure to keep an eye out for some new promo material at San Diego Comic-Con this week, where the pic will be enjoying its panel on Friday, July 20th.
